Anarchist Technologies Repair Manual
fixing the world through resistance and repair

CFP: Call for Papers for an Edited Book

Anarchism is experiencing a renaissance in locations all across the
world. Facilitated by information technologies, new anarchist
communities are forming and more established ones are gaining greater
recognition. The decentralized, non-hierarchical, peer-to-peer nature of
the relationships and social bonds which characterize these communities
has inspired a recent surge of interest within both scholarly geographic
and activist circles. Articles, conference sessions, and special issues
of geographic journals have all appeared in recent years provoking
debate and research within scholar-activism. Meanwhile, on the streets,
these social forms which have recently become a subject of geographic
study are broadening their scope, coalescing to form non-hierarchical
movements which directly enable more equitable resource distribution
while demanding an end to structural violence.

Anarchism in its most basic form is the theory and practice of
resisting, organizing, living and creating worlds without domination.
Anarchist practice of resistance is twofold: firstly, fighting the range
of exploitations and oppressions imposed by nation-states, corporations,
international oligarchies and other systems of domination. Secondly,
applying techniques of self-critique, acknowledging that the exercise of
power results in an internalization of oppressive mechanisms, and
fighting these as well. Organizing in spaces where the state does not
provide reliable basic services such as health care, education, or
access to food and clean water, collectives of people practicing
horizontal decision-making work to meet basic needs and repair their
communities.

Within the domain of information technologies anarchism has also driven
projects to protect populations from structural violence by creating
security infrastructures which shelter their communications from
surveillance. Rather than approaching internet surveillance with a
“nothing to hide” attitude, anarchists understand governments as
oppressive institutions; based on an arcane calculus of power justified
as morality, governments are liable to arbitrarily categorize any number
of activities sanctioned one day as prohibited the next. As people
living on lands that have been privatized by capitalist property
relations backed with state force, we are constantly subject to the
whimsical decisions of those in power about who will constitute the
oppressed class, be that on gender, class, racial, sexual, ethnic or
spiritual lines.

Information technologies have largely facilitated communication across
many regions of the Earth, inspiring new ways of approaching problems,
increasing access to resources and forming a new space for radical
subjectivities to emerge. With the exponential expansion of information
technologies over the past decades we have seen the practices of
resisting violence and oppression change in spontaneous, dramatic and
creative ways that have captured the attention and inspired the
imagination of people all around the world. We need not describe here
the manifold ways in which the networked world enables collaborations
and intersections only dreamed about in the past, but it is important to
be reminded of the material base it is built upon. Alluded to in the
saying “there is no cloud, it’s just other people’s computers,” data
centers share with popular movements the fact that there are actual
physical locations where they exist. Counterposed to this, the
non-physicality of internet communications creates a theoretical and
practical space like none we have known before.

However, alongside growth of information technologies it is important to
also recognize that the creation of these technologies themselves are
subject to the often blood-drenched flows of capitalist commodity
production and distribution. From the war-zones of coltan ore-mining operations in the Congo to the sweatshop conditions of the Shenzhen assembly line, the construction of the microchip leaves in its wake a fallout of both human and environmental destruction. The use of these
devices enables massive industries to capture billions of dollars even
with business models based solely on metadata, creating a massive
concentration of wealth and new lines of exclusion. And finally when the
machines are discarded, toxins are released damaging and transforming
both the living and non-living environment.

This book requests proposals for chapters exploring anarchism in both
theory and practice as it relates to all aspects of information
technologies for audiences that include the general public, activists
and early career scholars. While the call is open, preference will be
given to proposals for chapters that specifically focus on anarchism and
information technologies within repair (in all metaphorical and material
aspects), security, communications, organizing resistance movements,
access to hardware and approaches to dealing with the destruction of
both the human and more-than-human that occurs from creation to wasting.

Please submit abstracts of up to 350 words, a short bio of up to 200
words and any other pertinent information to the editors by July 1st,
2016. Authors will be informed of selection by September 1st, 2016.
First drafts of chapters will be due February 28, 2017, then following
revisions, a final publication date will be around September 1st, 2017.
Please feel free to contact the editors with any questions.

Contact information:

Erin Araujo: ela120 mun ca
Bill Budington: bill inputoutput io

About the Editors:

Erin Araujo is a PhD Candidate in the department of Geography at the
Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada as well as a member of the
Cambalache Collective, a money-less economy located in San Cristobal de
las Casas, Chiapas as well as other parts of Mexico. She has resided in
Chiapas for around nine years, is a life long anarchist and artist and
has participated in a number of resistance movements throughout the
Americas.

Bill Budington is a technologist working on software that empowers
people to resist surveillance in practical ways with the use of
encryption. He has been involved in various anarchist projects over the
years, from community-run book stores and hacker spaces to social
movements such as Occupy Oakland. Throughout his work on these projects,
his focus has been to utilize anarchist practice to reclaim spaces (both
physical and immaterial) that have been stolen from us.

The Event

The 32nd Chaos Communication Congress (32C3) is an annual four-day conference on technology, society and utopia. The Congress offers lectures and workshops and various events on a multitude of topics including (but not limited to) information technology and generally a critical-creative attitude towards technology and the discussion about the effects of technological advances on society.

NEWS

lecture: Internet Landscapes

In Internet Landscapes, Evan Roth with discuss his work as it relates to visualizing, archiving and understanding the Internet and its effects on culture with a focus on the misuse of communication technologies. Roth will trace his personal and creative history within an Internet landscape that has changed significantly in the last 16 years. The presentation will include a range of work culminating in his more recent pilgrimages to the beaches of the UK, New Zealand and Sweden, where submarine Internet fiber optic cables reach the land. Armed with an array of paranormal technologies, Roth will recount his personal quest to visualize and reconnect with a changing Internet landscape.

lecture: Public Library/Memory of the World

Access to knowledge for every member of society

Public Library is the synergy of two efforts. First, it makes the case for the institution of public library and its principle of universal access to knowledge. Second, it is an exploration and development of distributed internet infrastructure for amateur librarians. If Public Library is a proposal/RFC Memory of the World is its proof of concept and reference implementation.

In the catalog of History the institution of public library is listed in the category of phenomena of which we humans are most proud. Along with free public education, public healthcare, the scientific method, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Wikipedia, free software… It’s one of those almost invisible infrastructures that we start to notice only once they go extinct. A place where all people can get access to all knowledge that can be collected seemed for a long time a dream beyond reach – until the egalitarian impetus of social revolutions, the Enlightment idea of universality of knowledge, and the expcetional suspension of the comercial barriers of copyright made it possible.

The Internet has, as in many other situations, completely changed our expectations and imagination about what is possible. The dream of a catalogue of the world – a universal access to all available knowledge for every member of society – became realizable. A question merely of the meeting of curves on a graph: the point at which the line of global distribution of personal computers meets that of the critical mass of people with access to the Internet. Today nobody lacks the imagination necessary to see public libraries as part of a global infrastructure of universal access to knowledge for literally every member of society. However, the emergence and development of the Internet is taking place precisely at the point at which an institutional crisis — one with traumatic and inconceivable consequences — has also begun.

The reactionary forces of the »old regime« are staging a »Thermidor« to suppress the public libraries from pursuing their mission. Today public libraries cannot acquire, cannot even buy digital books from the world’s largest publishers. The small amount of e-books that they were able to acquire they must destroy after only twenty-six lendings. Libraries and the principle of universal access to all existing knowledge that they embody are losing, in every possible way, the battle with a market dominated by new players such as Amazon.com, Google, and Apple.

In 2012, Canada’s Conservative Party–led government cut financial support for Libraries and Archives Canada (LAC) by Can$9.6 million, which resulted in the loss of 400 archivist and librarian jobs, the shutting down of some of LAC’s Internet pages, and the cancellation of the further purchase of new books. In only three years, from 2010 to 2012, some 10 percent of public libraries were closed in Great Britain. The phenomena of which we people are most proud are being undercut and can easily go extinct.

lecture: So you want to build a satellite?

How hard can it be? An introduction into CubeSat development

CubeSat are small standardized satellites typically flown as secondary and containerized payloads piggybacking on the launches of larger satellites. Their low entrance cost have been a revolution in opening access to space for a broad range of institutions. In this talk the basics of CubeSat standards, technology and development are going to be presented. The goal is to proliferate the knowledge of what it takes to successfully build, launch and operate a CubeSat within and beyond the hacker community.

It has been 12 years since the first CubeSat was launched. Invented as a standard for university student satellite projects, the advantages of the CubeSat standard made it outgrow the educational field. The (relatively) low entrance hurdle in terms of cost and regulations has inspired many to pursue their own satellite project. But why do about 50% of all first-time CubeSats fail early? This talk is aiming at spreading the knowledge of how to tackle the task of conducting a CubeSat mission. What are the special requirements for CubeSats? How is the space environment different from what we came to expect for earth-based projects? What kind of components are available? What (FOSS) tools are available for the design and verification process?

– HAARP ionosphere http://www.haarp.net/
Angels Don’t Play this HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology, has 230 pages. This article will only give the highlights. Despite the amount of research (350 footnoted sources), at its heart it is a story about ordinary people who took on an extraordinary challenge in bringing their research forward.

Martin Howse
EARTHVOICE un-earths a dirty, soil circuit, modulating and expressing wormed and human voice, uniting deep earth currents and atmospheric signals with vocal bone and tongue fragility. EARTHVOICE explores the detection and extraction of code and signals from the sheer ground through unrefined electrochemistry and manipulation of crystal-bound electrons, air and light.http://www.1010.co.uk/org/earthvoice.html

Graham Dunning
Rhythm & Drone
As an artist I make things in various different formats, but generally to do with either Sound or Found Objects. My background is in experimental music and this continues into the art I make and how I go about it. I use experimentation and play as a main part of my making process. I also like to set myself restrictions for my projects similarly to the way scientific experiments are conducted. Noise – as unwanted sound like record crackle or tape hiss – often features in my work, and a visual equivalent in dirt, dust or decay. I often try and repeat a visual process with audio, and vice versa.http://grahamdunning.com/

Alejandra Perez Nuñez
aka elpueblodechina
noise artist
is a sound artist and art researcher, working with FOSS tools, noise and writing. She is a PhD student at Westminster university in London where her focus of research is Antarctic landscape and the unperceivable intensities entangled to remote sites. Her noise act is focused on the production of affect through the use of minimal setups. Hers is an investigative performance about the dissolution of borders between self and other.http://elpueblodechina.org/https://vimeo.com/139978732http://elpueblodechina.org/

Record Player Orchestra

The Record Player Orchestra is a interactive and performative installation of record players, turntables and bespoke vinyl records. Musical pieces are created by using the specially created record that was mastered at Abbey Road Studios and pressed at the Vinyl Factory.

The current version of this installation has between 10 and 15 record players and turntables so that it can be more mobile. I have been collecting these record players and turntables since I initiated the work in 2013.

There are a number of ways in which the Record Player Orchestra functions but it usually starts with individuals exploring the tracks on both sides of the vinyl record that is placed on all the record players.

From this, some people have wanted to engage with it on their own, going round all the record players, combining different tracks and creating layers of sounds.

As all the tracks are available digitally online (http://soundcloud.com/therecordplayerorchestra), some people have created compositions that they have brought to the Record Player Orchestra to be practiced and played and there have been times when others have submitted a composition by email that could be played when there are enough people gathered to play it.

Marta Zapparoli
is an Italian experimental sound artist, improviser , performer, and musician. She works and lives in Berlin from 2007.
Her music mainly consists in strongly narrative sonic pieces that she builds using a wide variety of recording techniques. Although it could be qualified as abstract, Zapparoli’s music reveal an accurate sense of nativity, her soundscapes, built using real-time tape manipulation and mixing, creating sounds that are considered non-musical or overheard are usually qualified as dense,
tense & strongly emotional.https://soundcloud.com/martazapparolihttp://martazapparoli.blogspot.de/

xname
is an Italian multimedia artist based in London. Her live performances are developed through the use of artificial lights and home-made micro-oscillators which generate sound waves. The light, transformed in electric current, passes through the circuit and exits in the shape of a sonic frequency, while the sound, modulated by manipulating the light sources, becomes tactile and synesthetic. The result is an hypnotic spectacle dominated by stroboscopy and industrial and noise-techno frequencies.http://xname.cc/https://soundcloud.com/xname

alo allik . tehis
alo allik is an estonian artist who has performed his audiovisual works, electroacoustic compositions, eclectic dj sets and live electronic music throughout the world at some rather renowned and other more obscure events and festivals, including transmediale, piksel, isea, todaysart, shinytoys, pluto, nweamo, icmc, nime, etc.. his aesthetically and geographically restless lifestyle has enabled him to traverse a diverse range of musical worlds including dj-ing electronic dance music, live electronic jam sessions, electroacoustic composition, free improvisation and audiovisual performances. alo is currently based near London (uk) where he mostly occupies himself programming, performing and researching computational strategies for live performancehttp://tehis.net/

elpueblodechina
Alejandra Perez Nuñez (Chile, 1972) aka elpueblodechina.org is a noise
artist, currently Mphil Phd candidate at University
of Westminster in London, UK where her research is focused on the
detection of imperceptible influences in sites using FOSS tools for
artistic and cultural creation. Her areas of work are, artistic
research, writing, noise performance, education, interface design, and
polar studies.http://elpueblodechina.org/

CAO
Cao is an electronic music project based in London and originally from Peru. Cao’s work is based on the exploration of ritual music through experimental electronics, minimal synth compositions and electronic folklore. The range of influences is wide and includes many elements from ethnic Peruvian music, industrial, neo-folk, psychedelia and black metal, heading towards a cosmic synthfolk.caomusicproject.bandcamp.com

Jussi Parikka (University of Southampton, Winchester School of Art) just uploaded a paper on Academia.edu:

“History of Computers”
by Jussi Parikka

A short entry in the reference volume “The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media” (eds. Ryan, Emerson, Robertson) on history of computers and methodologies how to investigate that history, also by way of media archaeology.

ESPACIO ENTER CANARIAS is a International Festival for all sectors related to art and digital culture, for ideas that will allow us to design the future of technological innovation. http://www.espacioenter.netPlace: TEA. Tenerife Espacio de las Artes
Tenerife, Canary Island, 3th to 10th december 2015

Drawing Towards Sound: Visualising The Sonic

London Stephen Lawrence Gallery, UK

Group exhibition on the interface between the visual and the aural through notation, featuring John Cage and Alison Knowles’s Notations, Cornelius Cardew’s graphic score Treatise, a workshop by Alvin Curran, films and drawings by Anton Lukoszevieze, Vicki Bennett and others. London Stephen Lawrence Gallery, 2 March–2 April.

This exhibition examines the interface between the visual and the aural through notation, documentation, performance and video/moving image. Each of these aspects are currently being explored from many different perspectives by contemporary composers, musicians, visual artists, and film/videographers. Its basic starting point is the historical graphic score/new notational practices of the modernist avant-garde and how sound is captured and communicated. Most famous here, is John Cage and Alison Knowles’ 1968 collection Notations and the recent update Notations 21 (2009) by Theresa Sauer. While the Highlights will include a complete performance of Cornelius Cardew’s 1960s graphic score Treatise, a visit and workshop performance by American experimentalist composer Alvin Curran (b.1938), and a rare chance to see UK performer Anton Lukoszevieze’s drawings and films, as well as Icelandic sound artist Hallveig Agústsdóttir’s drawing performances. It will position ‘classic’ experimental notations – such as Cage and Boulez – with the output of contemporary composers and visual artists. Also featuring, amongst many others, Aura Satz, Jennifer Walshe, Marianthi Paplexandri-Alexandri, Laura Buckley, Helen Pett’s exploration of performances on video, Vicki Bennett’s (People Like Us) collaged films, as well as Richard Hoadley’s interactive notations with dance/live performers, Simon Payne’s abstract exploration of vision and sound, and Neil Henderson’s evocative portrait of Evan Parker.

This course is now FULL, but we plan to run another in February 2016. Please contact us if you wish to register your interest for next year.

See Course blog. Course attendees have included curators from Hong Kong, Austria, The Netherlands, Ireland, USA, Canada, India, France and the UK.

This intensive week-long course in London is aimed at curators, exhibition organisers, educators and others working with contemporary art. The course will critically examine how contemporary curating can best match contemporary art practices, including practices that might be collaborative, or participatory. Since new media including social networking, augmented reality and open source have changed thinking on how art works in time and space, this course aims to update professional knowledge in the field. The local, national and international contexts of curating are rigourously examined.

Certificates of Attendance are available for this professional development course. Course attendees are responsible for their own travel and accommodation in London. Maximum of 12 places on this course, please book early.

Bronac Ferran is a curator, researcher and writer who works at the interfaces between arts, science, technologies and other disciplines. She set up and led the Interdisciplinary Arts Department at Arts Council England until 2007 and established numerous national and international partnerships and initiatives including the Arts Council England/AHRC Art and Science Research Fellowships Programme and the ACE/RSA Arts and Ecology initiative. She has been on juries for Transmediale (2009) and Ars Electronica Hybrid Arts (2009 & 2010) and a Senior Tutor Research at the Royal College of Art. In 2012 she curated ‘Poetry Language Code’ and in 2015 is co-curating ‘Graphic Constellations: Visual Poetry & the Properties of Space’ at the Ruskin Gallery in Cambridge. Her presentation draws on two texts, ‘Mind Over Media’ commissioned by the RCA, FACT and Liverpool University Press in 2013 and ‘Neuromorphobia’ to be published by Archive Books Berlin (ed.Warren Neidich) later this year based on her talk at the ‘Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism’ conference, Goldsmiths, 2014. boundaryobject.org@floatingstones

Dr Timothy J. Senior is a scholar and artist, currently serving as a Knowledge Exchange Researcher for the Arts and Humanities Research Council. His work asks how contemporary forms of practice in the arts, sciences and humanities might be opened up to new collaborative influences. Following his D.Phil. in Systems Neuroscience (Oxford 2008), he has explored these issues through an artist residency at Duke University (US) and visiting lectureships at Jacobs University Bremen (Germany) spanning the arts, neuroscience, digital humanities, and the social and political sciences. In 2012 he was awarded a Junior Fellowship at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, concluding with an internationally-oriented conference and exhibition on performative methods in scientific practice. Tim will be taking up this theme in his talk, exploring how performance-based methods may revolutionize the study of complex systems and our understanding of disciplinary research. art-sci.info

Paul Friedlander is an independent kinetic light sculptor and scientific artist based in London. He will give a telescopic talk on his career spanning more than 40 years from his early influence by Cybernetic art, his involvement with stage lighting for avant-garde music and subsequent development of his unique artistic media. The talk will be followed by a performance with hand held kinetic sculptures and chromastrobic light, a form of light he invented. Paul studied physics and mathematics at Sussex University and fine art at Exeter Art College. His youthful ambitions to become a cosmologist have continued to influence his art, exploring mathematical and scientific ideas in light. Some of his earliest work was based on catastrophe theory and chaos. He has a continuing interest in waves, creating many kinetic works using their mathematics in custom software he writes as part of his hybrid art. paulfriedlander.com

London: A Sonic Fragment

Sonic Fragment is an ambitious group show that brings together contemporary sound artists congregating in London, England. Despite tough living conditions, for artists especially, the capital still attracts and fosters a rich sound art scene. Their sonic concerns are varied as they are broad, travelling across spaces: galleries, nightclubs, squat parties, academic institutions and site specific work. Sonic Fragment aims to provide a glimpse of the cross disciplinary activities and shifting terrain of sound art emanating from the capital. London’s vibrant scene is installed into and pouring out of the Auricle.

Shelley Parker’sWall to Wall is constructed from a recording of maintenance work carried out onto the external wall of the artist’s flat, the piece attached to The Auricle’s external wall pounds out into the Auricle Wine and Sound Garden. www.shelleyparker.co.uk/

GPUD’sFragmental Machine greets you at the top of the gallery stairs, a standalone instrument using sampled field recordings with interactivity via light sensors and distance sensors.

In the gallery Graham Dunning’sUntitled (Translation 1) uses multiple layers of audio and video to create a hypnotic, spiralling montage, made to evoke a dystopian dream sequence or meditative state. www.grahamdunning.com/

Greta Pistaceci’s confrontational Screamers offers video and sound shot in one uninterrupted take, in which a close-up of a mouth goes through an imperfect “perfecting routine”. www.gretapistaceci.com/

Brown Sierra present the book Recordings Fragmented, a collection of recordings of sound made through maps, drawings and texts as a document of living in London demonstrating that sound art need not physically resonate. A selection of the sound art journal Noisegate, has also been provided. Set up to discuss and disseminate ideas around the evolving field of sound art this self published journal ran from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. www.brownsierra.org.uk/

Concretely, the piece reminds a bit the light-city-concept installation A Digital Experience of Visual System, but put into shape in a more impressive, bigger and almost-spiritual configuration. Occupying 600 square meters, The Surface of Spectral Scattering “translates the city of Cairo into a high energy discharge system with boundaries dictated by a poetic physics of transmission, where human actors play the role of inert conduits charged by abstract, external forces of zeal and fury”.

Indeed, the 10,000 hand-embroidered LED light connected in a spreading network pumped by 15 different power centers underline a very dynamic and imperceptibly-changing atmosphere, in which deep sound waves and sparse high frequencies enhance an impression of permanent tension. But the intensive expression of its “light-city physically mapped” refers nonetheless to a more human dimension that would embody deep memories of shouting (protesting?) people whose voices would be rapidly heard through the city before to vanish. A “surface of last screaming”, to use the expression of the artist, that gives here to lights and sounds’ ebb and flow a symbolic and emotional connection in terms of audiovisual language.

LISTENING

Artist Sam Belinfante curates a pioneering exhibition that will investigate the act of listening in contemporary visual art. Listening is the latest Hayward Touring Curatorial Openexhibition, opening at BALTIC’s project space BALTIC 39, Newcastle upon Tyne. This international group exhibition includes new and existing work by leading contemporary artists including Ed Atkins, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Christian Marclay, Haroon Mirza, Amalia Pica, Laure Prouvost and Anri Sala.

This exhibition examines the crossover between the visual and the sonic with many of the artists selected working in both the fields of contemporary music and art. Highlights in this exhibition include Hannah Rickards’ Thunder, a clap of thunder that has been stretched in duration and aurally dissected, recreated by musicians and morphed back into a thunderclap; an anechoic chamber by Haroon Mirza that silences the outside world; a new work by Laure Prouvost that choreographs a dialogue between lights and objects in the museum as well as Prem Sahib’s throbbing inaccessible disco. Ed Atkins will make new drawings in response to Listening, Cardiff and Miller will allow us to eavesdrop on a cabin in a forest and Katie Paterson presents the almost inaudible sound of a dying star.

Listening touches and folds into the other senses and can therefore work in tandem with, as well as contradict them. The exhibition will therefore include a variety of media from drawings and sculpture to prints and video. Works in the exhibition range dramatically in duration from less than a second to six hours. The exhibition is ambitious in its curatorial approach, orchestrating the works so that visitors are guided through the exhibition and works are allowed to ‘speak’ in turn.

This January MK Gallery presents How to Construct a Time Machine, an exhibition of over twenty-five historical and contemporary works that explore how artists play with media in innovative ways to transform our experience of time. What is time? How do we order the past, the present, and the future? Why are artists interested in time? How is art a machine, vehicle, or device for exploring time? How is art a means by which time ‘travels’, and how does art permit us to travel in time? Consideration of these and other questions has provided the exhibition rationale for guest curator, Dr Marquard Smith, Head of Doctoral Studies/Research Leader in the School of Humanities at the Royal College of Art, London. The show’s title is taken from an 1899 text by the avant-garde French writer, Alfred Jarry, written in direct response to H. G. Wells’ science fiction novel The Time Machine (1895). Wells invented and popularised a distinctively modern, fictional concept of time travel, with the time machine as a vehicle that could be operated ‘selectively’.Jarry’s response crafted a pseudo-scientific fiction that presents the time machine and time travel as an instance of ‘the science of imaginary solutions’. Taking this idea of the time machine, time travel, and perhaps even time itself as an instance of ‘the science of imaginary solutions’, the exhibition is divided thematically across the galleries and includes works by John Cage, Martin John Callanan, Jim Campbell, Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher, Mat Collishaw, Ruth Ewan, Tehching Hsieh, On Kawara, the Lumière Brothers, Chris Marker, Kris Martin, Georges Méliès, Manfred Mohr, Melvin Moti, Nam June Paik, Katie Paterson, Elizabeth Price, Sun Ra, Raqs Media Collective, Meekyoung Shin, Maja Smrekar, The Otolith Group, Thomson & Craighead, Mark Wallinger and Catherine Yass. Film work ranges from George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902), an iconic silent movie which follows a group of astronomers as they explore the moon, to Thomson & Craighead’s The Time Machine in alphabetical order (2010), a complete rendition of the 1960s film version of the Wells’ novella re-edited into alphabetical order. Sculptural work includes Mark Wallinger’s Time and Relative Dimensions in Space (2001), a polished stainless steel version of Dr Who’s ‘Tardis’ police box that simultaneously disappears into the space-time continuum and reflects its own surroundings, and Ruth Ewan’s We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted to Be (2012), a decimal clock which divides the day into ten (rather than twenty-four) periods, echoing a bold 18th century French Republican attempt to redefine and rationalise the day. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, designed by Herman Lelie, featuring an extended Introduction by the exhibition’s curator and a translation of Jarry’s How to Construct a Time Machine, together with essays by Dutch cultural theorist and video artist Mieke Bal and radical philosopher Peter Osborne. The exhibition will be supported by a range of related events including tours by the curator and artists, seminars, academic conferences, and film screenings. – See more at: http://www.mkgallery.org/exhibitions/how_to_construct_a_time_machine?utm_source=The+Wire&utm_campaign=45d76950c3-The+Wire+Weekly+5-11+February+2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f366f8c5d2-45d76950c3-71869373#sthash.vlaJV1HY.dpuf

Acoustics is mostly understood in terms of architectural spaces and materiality external to the body. Yet what of the resonances and echoes that transverse the inner rooms of the body? The inner voices and sounding memories that impart so much influence onto our perceptions and understandings? If acoustics assists in orienting ourselves spatially, the inner soundings are equally complex events by which we navigate the world.

Bringing together international artists focused on the inner voice, vocal resonance, and the poetics of the sounded, the exhibition gives important attention to the voice as an audible threshold between inner and outer.

The exhibition is presented as part of Transmediale and CTM Vorspiel program 2015.

We perceive that generally, a noise is accompanied by a rapid alternation of different kinds of sensations of sound. Think, for example, of the rattling of a carriage over granite paving stones, the splashing or seething of a waterfall or of the waves of the sea…”(1)

Contemporary musicians and sound artists are indebted to the 19th century German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), who authored the quote above in his significant publication On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1862). He explored the mathematical, physiological, and perceptual effects of sound and through these investigations he designed resonators and sirens that isolated sounds in space. Rather than the imagined harmonies between celestial bodies proposed by German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the 17th century, this research presented composers with a pragmatic and scientific approach to sound. Consequently, sounds from multiple sources beyond musical instruments entered the canon. French composer Eric Satie, for example, scored typewriters into his ballet La Parade (1917). Composer Edgar Varèse discovered Helmholtz’s music theory in 1905 and later declared, “Helmholtz was the first person to make me perceive music as being a mass of sounds evolving in space, rather than an ordered series of notes.”(2)

This revelation was the impetus for artists, poets, and musicians at the beginning of the 20th century to assimilate and re-present both natural and urban noises within their compositions. Zang Tumb Tumb (1912), the poem by Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, celebrated the mechanical noises of war. The French composer Olivier Messiaen specifically transposed his acute observations and recordings of bird songs into compositions from the 1950s including Le Merle noir (The Blackbird) and theCatalogue d’oiseaux (Bird Catalogue). One of his students, Greek architect/engineer Iannis Xenakis, likewise wove environmental utterances such as thunderstorms and lightning with mathematical principles into electroacoustic compositions. In support of Greenpeace, he even transposed the call of the whale in Pour les Baleines (For the Whales) (1982). Today, actual aural experiences continue to be captured, recorded, and transformed into soundscapes, phonography, and acoustic ecology, examples of which are presented in this exhibition by a small selection of visual artists, writers, musicians, and composers, whose disciplines becomes blurred in this field. The exhibition offers a blend of aesthetic and scientific knowledge that may provide a deeper understanding of how sound affects our comprehension of the environment.

Beluga whales became the participants David Rothenberg summoned to perform in his interactive call-and-response projectThousand Mile Song (2006). For this he undertook playing a clarinet from a boat on the White Sea, Karelia, Russia, in an attempt to jam with these whales of the wild Arctic region. He unwittingly expanded upon the Litany for the Whale (1980) that John Cage performed with unaccompanied vocalists who chanted pitches and sounds that corresponded to the letters of the word “whale,” evoking their song. Birds, as with Messiaen, have also been the subjects of Rothenberg’s research. He engages them in concert, playing with them and to them in their natural setting. Rothenberg’s publication Why Birds Sing (2006) reflects his extensive acoustic ecological research on these interactions. Cicadas recently became the passionate contributors to his song cycles as he engaged them in performances after their 17-year slumber. In this instance, think of the haiku poet Bashõ(3) (1644 – 1694):

The shell of the cicada:
It sang itself
Utterly away.

Field recordings have proliferated in recent years due to the availability and portability of high quality recording equipment, enticing more and more composers and artists to take their studios to the edge of the wilds or down the street. Consequently, auditory mapping has become a realistic option by charting a journey through sound. The composer Annea Lockwood is a pioneer in this realm who produces extraordinary examples of paths she travelled along rivers such as A Sound Map of the Danube (2005) and A Sound Map of the Housatonic River (2010). Her sound maps immerse the listener in the sounds of the river’s passage from headwaters to estuary, from mellifluous trickling flows to cacophonous turbulent rapids. This alternative mapping technique parallels the meticulous observations of the artist-come-mapmaker Tim Robinson who charts his home base of Connemara, Ireland. The native Irish-Gaelic language informs his graphic description of the topography where subtle nuances of the land, sea, and rivers are given a renewed presence. His description could apply to the sonic journeys of Lockwood: “Beyond the tamhnóg the stream gathers itself together again, and even where invisible it becomes increasingly audible, flinging itself onwards as if rejoicing in its name, the Róig, the attack or onrush.”(4)

Echoes of an oneiric voyage in a schooner to the Artic Circle are evoked in Long Approach (2012), a black and white video by Ed Osborn, a postscript to an expedition he undertook in 2011. Silence is framed by the gentle lapping and splashing of the sea on the hull of the vessel, which slowly, oh so slowly, glides through the freezing waters. White meets white as the ship rotates gradually with furled white sails trimmed in the rigging toward the snow-clad mountain. A single breath appears to propel the ship as it cuts through the wine dark sea. The subtlety of action is echoed in the subtlety of sound, and we are compelled to measure our heartbeat in this pensive atmosphere. Perhaps the craft carries a lifeless crew after the Ancient Mariner had committed his heinous crime against the albatross; he was subjected to his penance drifting, “Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion.”(5)

Another international venture is built with field recordings, the source of the raw unedited audio-visual postcards or Miniature Landscape Correspondences (2013), a collaborative project between Una Lee in South Korea and Chris H. Lynn in the United States. This again relies on a two-way call-and-response process of on-site audio recordings, coupled with a steady visual and audio rhythm. These reflect the direct experience of the everyday from each vantage point of the correspondent. The unassuming public spaces are captured to relay an intimate association for a private missive between friends. Short, without text, just two video shots with recording of urban or natural sites, no narrative or texts are recorded; it is purely the transmission of an atmosphere by each party. Here, poetic moments of image and sound convey all. Initially, current social networking sound bytes are conjured up with these very short audio visual videos, however they more closely resemble 19th century epistles between fellow poets. Once again the ruminations of Coleridge come to mind in which his communiqués transform his reader through poetic verse.

Another collaboration features the premier British field-recording artist Chris Watson and writer of the wilds Robert Macfarlane. Their audio narrative The Sea Road (2012) is a 12” LP vinyl record that blends spoken word and the natural sounds of another sea voyage that was recorded on the Jubilee, a half-sgoth or fishing skiff, en-route to a rock Sula Sgeir in the Atlantic, 20 miles off the coast of Lewis, Scotland, and site of the annual guga (young gannet) hunt. Macfarlane was a crewmember on this special celebratory journey retracing the boat’s hunts of years gone by. His recorded voice punctuates the soundscape of winds, waves, and wailing birds, weaving sonic waves and invoking the spirits of ancient mariners and hunters of birds. The recording captures the atmosphere, the “mood, tone, or texture” of the moment as Macfarlane notes in his Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2013), transforming the listener along this distant historic sea path.

The disciplines that have emerged since Helmholtz’s research include bio-musicology that formalizes thinking about the biological origins of music or even language. Another notable collaboration between George Quasha and Chuck Stein has been engaged for decades in linguistic/musical/poetic dialogues. They indulge in what they call “axial music and liminal languaging” performances where language is not narrative or descriptive but dissolves into what can only be described as pre-linguistic utterances. Babble but not babble evokes the origins of language, all accompanied by percussive rhythms. The primal cries of both the human and animal kingdom are brought to the surface. Their sonic correspondences weave into a transformative resonance that draws out the physiological and perception effects of sound and language.

1. Hermann von Helmholtz, MD, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, translated by Alexander J. Ellis (London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co., Third Edition, 1895), 12.2. Philippe Lalitte, “The Theories of Helmholtz in the work of Varèse.” Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 30, No. 5, October 2011: 329–344.3. Bashõ, translated by R.H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics (Tokyo: The Hokeseido Press, 1942), 48.4. Tim Robinson, Connemara: Listening to the Wind (Dublin: Penguin UK, 2007), 10.5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1st Publication, 1798, Part II.

Alastair Noble is an environmental/installation artist and printmaker from the UK, now based in New York City. His artistic practice is a response to architecture and the natural environment and reflects on particular sites in the context of poetry and literature. In May 2014 he was an artist-in-residence at the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont. Alastair’s artistic career spans 30 years with exhibitions and residencies in the UK, Peru, Chile, Bulgaria, and Italy. He has taught and lectured at numerous colleges, universities, and public institutions, and has curated exhibitions and organized symposiums on art, poetry, and the environment. His essays, articles, and reviews on art and architecture have also appeared in national and international publications.

Celebrated musician, composer, author, and philosopher naturalist, David Rothenberg, is known for his extensive and extraordinary work researching and reacting to the relationship between humanity and nature.

His performance at apexart will present examples of his work playing music live together with different creatures, from Why Birds Sing (2005) where he played with lyrerbirds, Thousand Mile Song (2008) where he joined singing humpback whales, and Bug Music(2013) where he was covered in 17-year cicadas.

This event is free and open to the public.

Seating is limited and first come, first serve. Doors open at 6:30.

As a composer and jazz clarinetist, David Rothenberg has nine CDs out under his own name, including On the Cliffs of the Heart, named one of the top ten CDs by Jazziz Magazine in 1995. He is the author of Why Birds Sing, on making music with birds, published in England, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Germany. It was turned into a feature length BBC TV documentary. His following book, Thousand Mile Song, is on making music with whales. It was turned into a film for French television. David Rothenberg is Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, which has encouraged and supported all of his creative projects since 1992.

Thursday, February 12
7 pm
An evening of axial music with
George Quasha and Charles Stein.

Axial music seeks to discover a type of “conscious sound” by letting go of expertise, skill, and premeditated control from the process of making music. At its core, Axial music strives to achieve an altered and enhanced state of receptivity in which soundings and lingualities (language realities) can emerge. According to axial music originators George Quasha and Charles Stein, to generate this type of sound requires a rigorous practice of listening to the internal logic of the performance as it is being created, moment to moment.

George Quasha, poet/artist/musician, explores a 3-term principle (axiality/liminality/configuration) in language, drawing, sculpture, video, sound, and performance. Most recent of some 20 books: in sculpture, Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance (2006, foreword Carter Ratcliff). In poetry, Speaking Animate (preverbs) (2014), Scorned Beauty Comes Up From Behind (preverbs) (2012), Verbal Paradise (preverbs) (2011), and three more of “preverbs” forthcoming this year: The Daimon of the Moment (Talisman House), Glossodelia Attract (Station Hill), and Things Done for Themselves (Marsh Hawk). In art writing: An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works and Writings (2009, with Charles Stein; foreword Lynne Cooke). A 2006 Guggenheim Fellow in video art, his art is: Speaking Portraits, recording over 1000 artists/poets/composers in 11 countries has been exhibited internationally. One-person shows include the Baumgartner Gallery (NYC), The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (New Paltz), Slought Foundation (Philadelphia), and the Snite Museum of Art (University of Notre Dame). Recipient of an NEA Fellowship in poetry. Co-founder and -publisher of Station Hill Press in Barrytown, New York.

Charles Stein‘s work comprises a complexly integrated field of poems, prose reflections, translations, drawings, photographs, lectures, conversations, and performances. Born 1944 in New York City, he is the author of thirteen books of poetry including There Where You Do Not Think To Be Thinking: Views From Tornado Island Book 12 (forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil), a new verse translation of The Odyssey (North Atlantic Books), From Mimir’s Head(Station Hill Press), and The Hat Rack Tree (Station Hill Press). Prose writings include a vision of the Eleusinian Mysteries, Persephone Unveiled (North Atlantic Books), a study of poet Charles Olson’s use of Jung, The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum (Station Hill Press), and with George Quasha An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works & Writings (Ediciones Polígrafa). He holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

Electrical Walks – “With special, sensitive headphones, the acoustic perceptibility of aboveground and underground electrical currents is … amplified…. The perception of everyday reality changes when one listens to the electrical fields; what is accustomed appears in a different context. Nothing looks the way it sounds. And nothing sounds the way it looks.”

Sawako created sounds using the 2.4 GHz spectrum used by WiFi, bluetooth, microwave ovens, cordless game controllers, etc.

“Our world is resonating with various kinds of waves, and the waves make harmony in the air. Human beings can catch the very limited signals of waves with their ears and eyes and use them for their communication. Like some fishes living in the standing river communicates with electromagnetic wave, with radio frequency technology, people expand the ways of communication using signals and the range of the frequency used for the communication. Even though we don’t realize, we are surrounded with the invisible signals like you are living in the invisible sound of ocean.”

“Cell Phone Disco is an experimental installation made out of flashing cells. By multiplication of a mobile phone gadget, only slightly altered consumer product, we created a space to experience the invisible body of the mobile phone.”

“Humans have only recently begun contributing to the cacophony with their pagers, medical devices, television broadcasts and mobile phones. This abundant invisible territory, a topography that is altered in shape and intensity by both natural and human-constructed landscapes, has been called ‘hertzian space’ by industrial design theorist Anthony Dunne. He has observed that hertzian space is often ignored by designers saying, in Hertzian Tales, that the ‘material responses to immaterial electromagnetic fields can lead to new aesthetic possibilities for architecture.'”
– Invisible Topographies by Usman Haque

Why I am interested in the invisible electromagnetic spectrum

Since the invention of radio, larger and larger portions of the invisible electromagnetic spectrum are being used to transmit data. With the increasing saturation of electronic devices, an awareness of the invisible magnetic fields they produce is important to understanding our environment. These man-made and natural waves create an invisible “hertzian space.” These invisible data structures can be recaptured and recontextualized as “art.”

An epiphany occured when I stumbled across lessemf.com – “The EMF Saftey Superstore”.

At first glance a seemingly normal electronics company based in Albany, NY, selling a wide range of EMF detectors from $5 – $2500, the company markets a number of the EMF detectors as “ghost hunting equipment”. They also sell EMF Safety Garments including EMF-shielding undergarments, long johns, socks, and baseball cap. Less EMF, Inc. also sells many books, including Living Without Electricity and HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy. At the same time they sell a book for children entitled Safe & Simple Electrical Experiments.

The diverse niche markets Less EMF, Inc. seem to be targeting include:

paranormal researchers

people who are paranoid about EMF radiation damaging their health

survivalists / conspiracy theorists

new agers

electronics hobbyists

This indicates to me that although EMF-producing devices are becoming ubiquitous, there is still a large sense of mystery, fear, and paranoia surrounding these invisible fields. Do cellphones cause brain tumors? Can we communicate with the dead? What about the spiritual aspects? Is the government trying to control my thoughts? and so forth.

They said it wouldn’t work…

excerpt from an email from Tom Igoe to “Physical Computing at ITP”

from: Tom Igoe
to: Physical Computing at ITP <phys-comp@forums.nyu.edu>
date: Nov 13, 2006 9:23 AM
subject: [phys-comp] Re: EM detectors
....
> But when I went to Radioshack seemed to be a suction cup device
> ($7.99) which you can use to record telephone conversations- should
> I try messing with this?
>
No, the suction cup device is just a microphone that you attach to a
phone receiver, and it picks up the conversation acoustically, like a
normal mic. It has nothing to do with the radiation.

Not so! The pickup does not respond to sound, but contains an inductor coil which allows you to hear changing magnetic fields. The way it picks up a telephone conversation is through inductance from the speaker.

What tipped me off that this detector might work is that the “magentic pickup” for sale on the Less EMFwebsite looks remarkably the same as the “telephone pickup” sold at Radioshack. Strangely enough, no one seemed to think this would work- including the knowledgeable employees at Radioshack. The moral of this story is that sometimes if you ask people for advice, they will give you the wrong advice, even if they are experts.

Once I got the detector working, my original intention was to have two detectors hooked up to stereo headphones alá Kubisch. The problem with this is that the detector isn’t sensitive enough; the EM fields drop off rapidly, so unless the detector is within a few centimeters of a device, nothing but a soft electrical hum is detected.

One constraint is that the more I want to represent visually, the less portable the device becomes. A handheld oscilloscope costs $100. Visualizations could be loaded onto a Blackberry or other PDA. But for more interesting visuals a desktop/laptop is probably needed.

Could the project be a portable device that plugs into an installed projector piece? Could two detectors be used to create a three dimensional representation of electromagnetic vector fields?

Other possibilities:

More complicated sounds than buzzing could be created using frequency modulation (FM synthesis). With two detectors, one detector could modulate another.

Non-screen based visualization using LEDs, solenoids, water waves, television interference, etc.

Taylor will examine the story of computer art through the lens of art criticism. We know from artist accounts that a certain type of negativity, which often bordered on the hostile, met most forms of computer art. Such criticism was widespread enough to make computer art, especially in the eyes of the orthodox art world, synonymous with negative criticism itself. The nature of computer art?s criticism, however, was complex and multileveled, often reflecting modes of traditional art criticism and at the same time being entirely divorced from it. Evidently, much of what informs the reception of computer art emerges from various cultural sources. The heated debates between art and science, the societal anxiety over nascent computer technology, and the myths and philosophies surrounding digital computation all impacted the judgment of computer art.

Taylor is the author of the recent book When the Machine Made Art: The Troubled History of Computer Art (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). Taylor curated and wrote the catalogue essay for the 2013 travelling exhibition The American Algorists: Linear Sublime, which was the first large-scale exhibition of the Algorists in the United States. He is also an Associate Editor of Media-N (the journal of the New Media Caucus). Taylor completed his graduate and post-graduate studies at the University of Western Australia. At UWA, Taylor taught courses in new media art and American art and worked with the biological arts laboratory SymbioticA. Beyond his scholarship in art history, Taylor has wide interests that included new media practice. Taylor has completed various art projects, including a documentary film and multimedia installations in the United States and Australia. He currently teaches modern and contemporary art at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania.

Data analysis has become an everyday affair in the cultural logic of late capitalism. Not only in terms of applied science, but overall socially, aesthetically and individually as well. The uncritical acceptance of the use of game mechanics in digital life is quickly turning into the most convenient method of collecting data, and finally a second nature. Nonetheless, while the visual rendering and the exposure to pictures or symbols are an ordinary fact, the perception of sound as a tool for auditory display and recognition remains much less common.

Labor Neunzehn presents an exhibition, which focuses on the practices of collecting informations by means of sound. A shortlist of works dealing with sonification, audification and field recording techniques for the exploration of data, global imbalances, climate change, and cultural shifting.#

„Sonic Antarctica“ features natural and industrial field recordings, sonifications and audifications of science data and interviews with weather and climate scientists. The areas recorded include: the „Dry Valleys“ (77°30’S 163°00’E) on the shore of McMurdo Sound, 3,500 km due south of New Zealand, the driest and largest relatively ice-free area on the continent completely devoid of terrestrial vegetation. Another is the geographic South Pole (90°00’S), the center of a featureless flat white expance, on top of ice nearly 1.7 miles thick.

The „Sonic Antarctica“ Project is a radio broadcast, live performance as well as a sound and visual installation. It features recordings of the Antarctic soundscape made during Andrea Polli’s seven-week National Science Foundation residency in Antarctica during the 2007/2008 season.

The Antarctic is unlike any other place on earth: geographically, politically and culturally. Larger than the US, it is a frontier where borders and nationalities take a back seat to scientific collaboration and cooperation, a place where the compass becomes meaningless, yet, navigation is a matter of life and death. It is an extreme environment that holds some of the most unique species. But it is also an ecosystem undergoing rapid change. 2007/2008 marks the fourth International Polar Year (IPY), the largest and most ambitious international effort to investigate the impact of the poles on the global environment.

BIO

Andrea Polli is an artist working at the intersection of art, science and technology whose practice includes media installation, public interventions, curating and directing art and community projects and writing. She has been creating media and technology artworks related to environmental science issues since 1999, when she first began collaborating with atmospheric scientists on sound and data sonification projects. Among other organizations, she has worked with the NASA/Goddard Institute Climate Research Group in New York City, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and AirNow.

In her research and practice, she experiments with performance, interactive and web art, digital broadcasting and mobile media. She is focused on participatory media, and her practice often includes workshops or other activities designed to engage the public with ideas and concepts at various levels. She believes in the importance of many levels of interdisciplinary collaboration and has created collaborative situations for very large groups, small teams, or pairs of individuals.

Polli is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Ecology with appointments in the College of Fine Arts and School of Engineering at the University of New Mexico. She holds the Mesa Del Sol Endowed Chair of Digital Media and directs the Social Media Workgroup, a lab at the University’s Center for Advanced Research Computing.

…the initial colonization of the Old World (now thought to have occurred one and a half million years ago, or even earlier) led to different homogenous human populations at the peripheries of the human geographic range. There, at the edges, evolutionary forces have different effects than they do at the center of a species’ range which, for humans, is Africa.Race and Human Evolution, A Fatal Attraction: Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari

The Maker is part of a series of four works entitled Centre and Edge, which explores the sound world of a particular region rich in human and natural history, a region with its fair share of wilderness. The concept of ‘centre and edge’ is investigated across a range of topics: specific compositional practices, the production of space, the anthropology of place names, human intervention in the landscapes and soundscapes, paleoanthropology, bridges and boundaries, the natural history of Southern Scotland, to name a few.

The Maker, in common with the other three works in the series, gives the impression of a massive installation in which microphones have been left open for long durations in various outdoor spaces, attached to built structures such as fences and mountain huts, then all sources fed into the same listening space.

The wealth and complexity of vertical relationships between the various sound sources and their transformations helps the work to defy linear time and to simply exist as a living moving organic whole between and beyond the speakers.

BIO

James Wyness is a composer and environmental sound artist based in the Scottish Borders. In his live work he combines layered field recordings and sonic interventions in the landscape with the live manipulation of found objects to create a series of fabricated environments. A constantly shifting mass of natural elements in motion contrasts with representations of wide open spaces, ambiences in which native sounds and human interventions merge, inviting the listener to navigate through deeper listening the time and space of the work.

Asad Ismi & Kristin Schwartz

The Ravaging of Africa, a four-part radio documentary series about the destructive impact of U.S. imperialism on Africa, featuring voices of African activists interviewed at the 2007 World Social Forum held in Nairobi, Kenya.

Written by Asad Ismi
Produced by Kristin Schwartz

Through the Pentagon and the CIA, the U.S. government has fueled 14 wars in Africa. The methods employed include direct and proxy invasions as well as arms transfers and military training. The U.S. has used the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to systematically demolish African economies and health and education sectors. This military and economic war enables the looting of Africa’s resources by Western multinational corporations. Washington’s genocidal imperial strategy has killed more than 26 million Africans but failed to suppress popular resistance.

1. “Militarizing Africa” describes how the United States has fomented the devastating war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as taken part in and engineered the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. With Mfuni Kazadi, Millicent Okumu, Farah Maalim and Halima Abdi Arush.

2. “Economic War” focuses on the World Bank’s and IMF’s decimation of the economies and social sectors of Guinea, Zambia, Kenya and South Africa. With Bakary Fofana, Sara Longwe, Caroline Adhiambo, Njuki Githethwa and Molefe Pilane.

3. “Corporate Plunder” details the disastrous effects of Royal Dutch Shell’s operations in Nigeria and those of Canada’s Tiomin Resources in Kenya. Also highlighted is the massive tax looting of Africa by Western corporations. With Ifieniya Lott, Mwana Siti B. Juma, Charles Abugre and John Christensen.

4. “African Resistance” celebrates the liberation of Southern Africa, the defeat of U.S. aims in the Congo and Somalia, as well as the diverse non-military struggles against U.S. domination that were represented at the World Social Forum. With Wahu Kaara, Amade Suca, Mfuni Kazadi, Farah Maalim, Virginia Magwaza-Setshedi, Emilie Atchaka and Njeru Munyi.

Asad Ismi is an award-winning writer on international politics specializing in the impact of U.S. and Canadian imperialism on the Global South. He is international affairs correspondent for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, Canada’s biggest left-wing magazine (by circulation). Asad is the author of more than 150 articles, eight reports, six radio documentaries, six books and an anthology. He has written for 21 progressive Canadian unions and non-governmental organizations. For his publications, visit www.asadismi.ws.

Kristin Schwartz is a community-based writer, radio producer and radio broadcaster. She is a founding contributor to GroundWire Community Radio News, a biweekly progressive public affairs program which airs on 25 community radio stations across Canada. She has also produced and reported for Free Speech Radio News in the United States. Her writing has been published in the CCPA Monitor, Labour/Le Travail, and Canada’s independent labour magazine Our Times, and she is the author of “A Million Reasons: The Victory of the $10.00 Minimum Wage Campaign” published by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. Kristin is employed in the settlement sector and is a member of the union Unifor Local 40.

WORK

An interactive audio/visual which generates music using the orbital frequencies of the solar system. Each time one of the bodies completes an orbit, it generates a sound, together they weave an ambient space-melody.

BIO

Whitevinyl is the visual work of Luke Twyman, freelance in graphic design, illustration and web/interactive design, and based in Brighton UK.

Quotidian Record is a limited edition vinyl recording that features a continuous year of my location-tracking data. Each place I visited, from home to work, from a friend’s apartment to a foreign city, is mapped to a harmonic relationship. 1 day is 1 rotation … 365 days is ~11 minutes.

As the record turns, the markings on the platter indicate both the time as it rotates through every 24 hours and the names of the cities to which I travel. The sound suggests that our habitual patterns have inherent musical qualities, and that daily rhythms might form an emergent portrait of an individual.

As physical vinyl, Quotidian Record may be collected and fetishized, connecting the value of data today with the history of popular music culture. It provides an expressive, embodied, and even nostalgic alternative to the narratives of classification and control typical of state and corporate data infrastructure.

BIO

Brian House is a media artist whose work traverses alternative geographies, experimental music, and a critical data practice. He is interested in the contingent qualities of information and how we experience time in network culture. By constructing embodied, participatory systems, he seeks to negotiate between algorithms and the rhythms of everyday life.

Currently, Brian teaches in the Digital + Media program at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Previously, he was a member of the New York Times Research and Development Lab, where his work was recognized by TIME in their “50 Best Inventions of 2011″ issue. Brian has also led technology at the award-winning design studio Local Projects, developed courses at Parsons Design & Technology program and Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, and was an artist-in-residence at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center.

‘What can we learn of dangerous places by listening to their sounds?’
‘Sonic Journalism’ is the aural equivalent of photojournalism. It describes the practice where field recordings play a major role in the discussion and documentation of places, issues and events and where listening to sounds of all kinds strongly informs the approach to research and following narratives whilst on location.
Recent travels have brought me into contact with some difficult and potentially dangerous places. Most are areas of major environmental/ecological damage, but others are nuclear sites or the edges of military zones. The danger is not necessarily to a short-term visitor, but to the people of the area who have no option to leave or through the location’s role in geopolitical power structures. Dangerous places can be both sonically and visually compelling, even beautiful and atmospheric. There is, often, an extreme dichotomy between an aesthetic response and knowledge of the ‘danger’, whether it is pollution, social injustice, military or geopolitical.

Peter Cusack is a field recordist and sound artist with a long interest in the sound environment. He is a research fellow and a member of CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice) at the University of the Arts, London. In 1998 he started the Favourite Sounds Project that explores what people find positive about the soundscapes of the cities – London, Beijing, Chicago, Prague, Birmingham and Berlin – where they live. His project Sounds From Dangerous Places (described as sonic journalism) investigates soundscapes at sites of major environmental damage, currently the Aral Sea, Kazakhstan. During 2011/12 he was a DAAD artist-in-residence in Berlin and started the Berlin Sonic Places project – an on-going study of Berlin’s soundscape. He is based in london and Berlin.

Perhaps best described as the sonification of a visual experience, Light Reading(s) was created by using small, hand-held photocells (cells that vary the flow of electric current according to the amount of light falling on them) to amplify light frequencies from the lights in the artist’s studio and recording rig. The varying currents of light are fed into a small analog circuit, which translates the photocell information into musical form. The corresponding video, recorded by a hand-held micro-camera, consists of footage of the abstract light sources that generate the sound.

BIO

Stephen Vitiello (b. 1964, New York City)
Recent solo exhibitions include All Those Vanished Engines, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2011-2016); A Bell For Every Minute, The High Line, NYC (2010-2011); More Songs About Buildings and Bells, Museum 52, New York (2011); and Stephen Vitiello, The Project, New York (2006). He has participated in such group exhibitions as Soundings: A Contemporary Score, Museum of Modern Art, NY (2013); Sound Objects: Leah Beeferman and Stephen Vitiello, Fridman Gallery, New York (2014); September 11, PS 1/MoMA, LIC, NY (2011-2012); the 15th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2006); Yanomami: Spirit of the Forest at the Cartier Foundation, Paris; and the 2002 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2002). Vitiello has performed nationally and internationally, at locations such as the Tate Modern, London; the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival; The Kitchen, New York; and the Cartier Foundation, Paris. In 2011, ABC-TV, Australia produced the documentary Stephen Vitiello: Listening With Intent. Awards include Creative Capital (2006) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2011-2012). Vitiello is a professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. He lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

“Félix Blume is a sound engineer for the movies. Like many of his colleagues, he spends hours after the shooting, recording “lonely sounds”. They are called lonely because they don’t have a synchronous image, but it could also come from the fact that the engineer is lonely, away from the bustling sounds of the team, busy finding noises and atmospheres typical to the location, that will enrich the future film editing. It is from these expectations and obstination that an outside ear could find strange or funny, that Félix Blume got the idea to create these short films.”

Étienne Noiseau – Syntone.fr

BIO

Félix Blume is born in the South of France in 1984. He studied Sound in Toulouse and in the famous cinema school INSAS in Brussels. He has mainly worked as a sound engineer for independent documentaries and with some video-artists. He spends his time between Europe and Mexico and travels around the world for his shootings. He records sounds during his trips and shares them on the internet, mostly on Freesound and Soundcloud.
He also works on personnal ‘sound creations’, turning his sounds into “sonic postcards” & soundscapes broadcasted by ARTE Radio (Fr), Phaune Radio (Fr), Radio Grenouille (Fr), Kunst Radio (Au).

Contemporary musicians and sound artists are indebted to the 19th century German physicist Herman
Helmholtz (1821-1894) who authored On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory
of Music (1862). In the book, Helmholtz explored the mathematical, physiological, and perception
effects of sound: “We perceive that generally, a noise is accompanied by a rapid alternation of different
kinds of sensations of sound. Think, for example, of the rattling of a carriage over granite paving stones,
the splashing or seething of a waterfall or of the waves of the sea, the rustling of leaves in a wood.”
Artistic disciplines examining sound have emerged since Helmholtz’s research, “the waves of the sea” has turned
into acoustic ecology that examines how sound is an integrative principle in human and natural environments.
Field recordings have proliferated in recent years due to the availability and portability of high quality recording
equipment, enticing composers and sound artists to take their studios to the edge of the wilds or down the
street. The exhibition FOOT NOTES: On the Sensations of Tone and two public performance events draw together
nine artists/composers whose works poetically map sound that reflect and emerge from their interaction with
the natural environment.
For more information please contact Lorissa Rinehart at lorissa.rinehart@apexart.org or visit apexart.org/exhibitions/noble.php
Alastair Noble is an environmental/installation artist and printmaker from the UK, now based in New York City. His artistic practice is a
response to architecture and the natural environment and reflects on particular sites in the context of poetry and literature. In May 2014 he
was an artist-in-residence at the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont. Alastair’s artistic career spans 30
years with exhibitions and residencies in the UK, Peru, Chile, Bulgaria, and Italy. He has taught and lectured at numerous colleges, universities,
and public institutions, and has curated exhibitions and organized symposiums on art, poetry, and the environment. His essays, articles, and
reviews on art and architecture have also appeared in national and international publications.

“We perceive that generally, a noise is accompanied by a rapid alternation of different kinds of sensations of sound. Think, for example, of the rattling of a carriage over granite paving stones, the splashing or seething of a waterfall or of the waves of the sea…”(1)

Contemporary musicians and sound artists are indebted to the 19th century German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), who authored the quote above in his significant publication On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1862). He explored the mathematical, physiological, and perceptual effects of sound and through these investigations he designed resonators and sirens that isolated sounds in space. Rather than the imagined harmonies between celestial bodies proposed by German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the 17th century, this research presented composers with a pragmatic and scientific approach to sound. Consequently, sounds from multiple sources beyond musical instruments entered the canon. French composer Eric Satie, for example, scored typewriters into his ballet La Parade (1917). Composer Edgar Varèse discovered Helmholtz’s music theory in 1905 and later declared, “Helmholtz was the first person to make me perceive music as being a mass of sounds evolving in space, rather than an ordered series of notes.”(2)

This revelation was the impetus for artists, poets, and musicians at the beginning of the 20th century to assimilate and re-present both natural and urban noises within their compositions. Zang Tumb Tumb (1912), the poem by Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, celebrated the mechanical noises of war. The French composer Olivier Messiaen specifically transposed his acute observations and recordings of bird songs into compositions from the 1950s including Le Merle noir (The Blackbird) and theCatalogue d’oiseaux (Bird Catalogue). One of his students, Greek architect/engineer Iannis Xenakis, likewise wove environmental utterances such as thunderstorms and lightning with mathematical principles into electroacoustic compositions. In support of Greenpeace, he even transposed the call of the whale in Pour les Baleines (For the Whales) (1982). Today, actual aural experiences continue to be captured, recorded, and transformed into soundscapes, phonography, and acoustic ecology, examples of which are presented in this exhibition by a small selection of visual artists, writers, musicians, and composers, whose disciplines becomes blurred in this field. The exhibition offers a blend of aesthetic and scientific knowledge that may provide a deeper understanding of how sound affects our comprehension of the environment.

Beluga whales became the participants David Rothenberg summoned to perform in his interactive call-and-response projectThousand Mile Song (2006). For this he undertook playing a clarinet from a boat on the White Sea, Karelia, Russia, in an attempt to jam with these whales of the wild Arctic region. He unwittingly expanded upon the Litany for the Whale (1980) that John Cage performed with unaccompanied vocalists who chanted pitches and sounds that corresponded to the letters of the word “whale,” evoking their song. Birds, as with Messiaen, have also been the subjects of Rothenberg’s research. He engages them in concert, playing with them and to them in their natural setting. Rothenberg’s publication Why Birds Sing (2006) reflects his extensive acoustic ecological research on these interactions. Cicadas recently became the passionate contributors to his song cycles as he engaged them in performances after their 17-year slumber. In this instance, think of the haiku poet Bashõ(3) (1644 – 1694):

The shell of the cicada:
It sang itself
Utterly away.

Field recordings have proliferated in recent years due to the availability and portability of high quality recording equipment, enticing more and more composers and artists to take their studios to the edge of the wilds or down the street. Consequently, auditory mapping has become a realistic option by charting a journey through sound. The composer Annea Lockwood is a pioneer in this realm who produces extraordinary examples of paths she travelled along rivers such as A Sound Map of the Danube (2005) and A Sound Map of the Housatonic River (2010). Her sound maps immerse the listener in the sounds of the river’s passage from headwaters to estuary, from mellifluous trickling flows to cacophonous turbulent rapids. This alternative mapping technique parallels the meticulous observations of the artist-come-mapmaker Tim Robinson who charts his home base of Connemara, Ireland. The native Irish-Gaelic language informs his graphic description of the topography where subtle nuances of the land, sea, and rivers are given a renewed presence. His description could apply to the sonic journeys of Lockwood: “Beyond the tamhnóg the stream gathers itself together again, and even where invisible it becomes increasingly audible, flinging itself onwards as if rejoicing in its name, the Róig, the attack or onrush.”(4)

Echoes of an oneiric voyage in a schooner to the Artic Circle are evoked in Long Approach (2012), a black and white video by Ed Osborn, a postscript to an expedition he undertook in 2011. Silence is framed by the gentle lapping and splashing of the sea on the hull of the vessel, which slowly, oh so slowly, glides through the freezing waters. White meets white as the ship rotates gradually with furled white sails trimmed in the rigging toward the snow-clad mountain. A single breath appears to propel the ship as it cuts through the wine dark sea. The subtlety of action is echoed in the subtlety of sound, and we are compelled to measure our heartbeat in this pensive atmosphere. Perhaps the craft carries a lifeless crew after the Ancient Mariner had committed his heinous crime against the albatross; he was subjected to his penance drifting, “Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion.”(5)

Another international venture is built with field recordings, the source of the raw unedited audio-visual postcards or Miniature Landscape Correspondences (2013), a collaborative project between Una Lee in South Korea and Chris H. Lynn in the United States. This again relies on a two-way call-and-response process of on-site audio recordings, coupled with a steady visual and audio rhythm. These reflect the direct experience of the everyday from each vantage point of the correspondent. The unassuming public spaces are captured to relay an intimate association for a private missive between friends. Short, without text, just two video shots with recording of urban or natural sites, no narrative or texts are recorded; it is purely the transmission of an atmosphere by each party. Here, poetic moments of image and sound convey all. Initially, current social networking sound bytes are conjured up with these very short audio visual videos, however they more closely resemble 19th century epistles between fellow poets. Once again the ruminations of Coleridge come to mind in which his communiqués transform his reader through poetic verse.

Another collaboration features the premier British field-recording artist Chris Watson and writer of the wilds Robert Macfarlane. Their audio narrative The Sea Road (2012) is a 12” LP vinyl record that blends spoken word and the natural sounds of another sea voyage that was recorded on the Jubilee, a half-sgoth or fishing skiff, en-route to a rock Sula Sgeir in the Atlantic, 20 miles off the coast of Lewis, Scotland, and site of the annual guga (young gannet) hunt. Macfarlane was a crewmember on this special celebratory journey retracing the boat’s hunts of years gone by. His recorded voice punctuates the soundscape of winds, waves, and wailing birds, weaving sonic waves and invoking the spirits of ancient mariners and hunters of birds. The recording captures the atmosphere, the “mood, tone, or texture” of the moment as Macfarlane notes in his Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2013), transforming the listener along this distant historic sea path.

The disciplines that have emerged since Helmholtz’s research include bio-musicology that formalizes thinking about the biological origins of music or even language. Another notable collaboration between George Quasha and Chuck Stein has been engaged for decades in linguistic/musical/poetic dialogues. They indulge in what they call “axial music and liminal languaging” performances where language is not narrative or descriptive but dissolves into what can only be described as pre-linguistic utterances. Babble but not babble evokes the origins of language, all accompanied by percussive rhythms. The primal cries of both the human and animal kingdom are brought to the surface. Their sonic correspondences weave into a transformative resonance that draws out the physiological and perception effects of sound and language.

1. Hermann von Helmholtz, MD, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, translated by Alexander J. Ellis (London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co., Third Edition, 1895), 12.2. Philippe Lalitte, “The Theories of Helmholtz in the work of Varèse.” Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 30, No. 5, October 2011: 329–344.3. Bashõ, translated by R.H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics (Tokyo: The Hokeseido Press, 1942), 48.4. Tim Robinson, Connemara: Listening to the Wind (Dublin: Penguin UK, 2007), 10.5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1st Publication, 1798, Part II.

Alastair Noble is an environmental/installation artist and printmaker from the UK, now based in New York City. His artistic practice is a response to architecture and the natural environment and reflects on particular sites in the context of poetry and literature. In May 2014 he was an artist-in-residence at the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont. Alastair’s artistic career spans 30 years with exhibitions and residencies in the UK, Peru, Chile, Bulgaria, and Italy. He has taught and lectured at numerous colleges, universities, and public institutions, and has curated exhibitions and organized symposiums on art, poetry, and the environment. His essays, articles, and reviews on art and architecture have also appeared in national and international publications.

Artist Paolo Cirio has hacked the paywalls of the most influential financial newspapers
– Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and The Economist – breaking through their checkpoints every day to liberate over 60,000 pay-per-view items published over the course of 2014.

Now, he redistributes this copyrighted content for free and pays everyone to read it.
His paid-to-read schema is a circular economic model in which profit generated from huge amounts of pirated content is invested into informing and educating the public about institutional crime and corruption, while offering rewards to critical journalists.http://DailyPaywall.com/?/l/about

With the massive amount of appropriated content, the artist has created his own online and printed newspaper called Daily Paywall. He has edited 15 issues of his paper covering the main topics of our time. For each issue he has selected featured articles which expose major economic injustices and contradictions. Readers receive $1 for responding correctly to simple questions relating to these articles, thereby incentivizing analytical and critical thinking around the story.http://DailyPaywall.com/?/l/issueshttp://DailyPaywall.com/?/l/featured

The Daily Paywall newspaper is distributed on the Internet and in printed versions disseminated in undisclosed spots throughout NYC in unauthorized racks for free papers. See Daily Paywall newsracks in NYC.http://paolocirio.net/work/daily-paywall/#pics

Beyond advocating the open circulation of knowledge, the project proposes a creative economic model designed for social and educational aims. The visionary concept behind the artistic performance and these socio-economic matters are introduced in his essay.http://DailyPaywall.com/?/l/about/#essay
Don’t miss another recent project by Paolo Cirio, Global Direct, which outlines and campaigns for a new creative political philosophy:http://GlobalDirect.today

A few shows featuring Paolo Cirio in 2015:
– Exhibition at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in U.S.
– Lecture at FutureEverything in Manchester, UK
– Incubation at NEW INC. studio in NYC
– Exhibition at Centre Culturel Bellegard in Toulouse, France
– Solo Show at NOME, contemporary art gallery in Berlin, Germany
– Exhibition at Apexart gallery in NYC
– Exhibition at ISEA2015 in Vancouver, Canada

Thursday, June 11 ? Sunday, June 14, 2015
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Denver, Colorado

FEATURED SPEAKERS:

*Nicolas Carr,* influential author and thinker on culture and technology.
His writing includes *The Shallows (NY Times bestseller), The Big Switch,
Does IT matter, and The Glass Cage. Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. *
*www.nicholascarr.com* <http://www.nicholascarr.com/>

*Johanna Drucker*, professor of Design Media Arts at UCLA whose exemplary
record of scholarship and innovation includes works such as *SpecLab:
Digital Aesthetics and Speculative Computing*, *Graphic Design History: A
Critical Guide*, and especially, *Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge
Production*, regarded by many as seminal and ground breaking works that
span the bridges between information studies, media studies and
design/visual studies.

Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver) is proud to host the 16
th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association. MSU Denver is
Colorado?s land grant university and educates the most diverse student body
of any institution in the state. The University is an epicenter for urban
impact, transforming lives, communities and higher education. It is with
this perspective of dynamic diversity, transformation, and community
engagement that we aim to explore the concept of ?Kaleidoscope of Media and
Community? as the convention theme.

The term ?kaleidoscope? means the observation of beautiful forms. When we
look through a kaleidoscope, we see a multitude of shapes, colors, and
textures combine to create beautiful patterns. . With every turn of the
kaleidoscope, the patterns shift and change, yet still combine to create a
whole image. As abolitionist and clergyman Henry Ward Beecher said, ?Our
days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the
contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort.
The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each
other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house,
with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of
system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities.? This conference looks
at the recursive relationships of media and community as a pattern of
continuously shifting, adapting parts combining in an infinite array of
possibilities within mediated environments.

The field of Media Ecology is multi-disciplinary in nature, bringing
together a broad collection of specialties, perspectives and expertise.
This year?s theme of community offers the possibility to think about
communities as part of a media?s ecology and its technologies. Community
opens our discourse to human interaction that is face-to-face, urban,
rural, central, remote, online, hybrid, historical, fictional, human,
animal, functional, dysfunctional, young, old, diverse, educated, oral,
literate, digital and linked to the technology and media in its
environment.

The 16th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association invites papers,
panels, workshop sessions, short film and video works, and creative
projects that explore the convention theme. Submissions on any topic of
interest to Media Ecology are also encouraged. Authors who want their
papers considered for the Top Paper or Top Student Paper award must
indicate this on their submissions. All submissions will be acknowledged.

The convention site at MSU Denver is located in the heart of downtown
Denver on the Auraria Campus. There is a wide range of hotels,
restaurants, and entertainment options within easy walking or biking
distance from campus. Rental bicycles are readily available through the
city?s program. Discounted rooms will be available at our state of the art
on-campus, student-run hotel, the SpringHill Suites at Marriott. An
excursion to the mountains is planned for Friday evening. Additional
information about lodging, logistics, and events will be forthcoming.

Hi Everyone, Today we are announcing a happy news in CircuitsToday. We are launching an Online Store at Store.CircuitsToday.com We will be Live from today, 18th December 2014. We are launching with only 8051 Micro controller based Project Kits for Engineering Students and Hobbyists. We will be adding more inventories very soon in our online shop. You can expect popular and commonly used products for sale in coming months. WE WILL BE SELLING MAJOR ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS DEVELOPMENT KITS PROGRAMMERS EVALUATION BOARDS SENSORS and IC’S ARDUINO’s and RASPBERRY PI’s PROJECT KIT for STUDENTS and HOBBYISTS WE OFFER HIGH QUALITY…

Gas Leakage Detector using 8051

Quick Overview

8051 based gas detection system is a prototype of the industrial gas detector system. The system is equipped with an MQ sensor which can sense the presence of LPG. The sensor detects the presence of LPG and alerts the microcontroller. The microcontroller then perform the plant shutdown option if necessary. The system consists of a relay which is meant to shut down the plant if gas is present. Necessary warnings are displayed on the LCD. The user can set the desired trigger level, that is, the gas intensity point at which the shutdown should take place by adjusting the potentiometer in the system.

Call for ideas for sharing field research to test out in Madagascar.
Please distribute widely to any people or students who might have
interesting or fun ideas for us to try!

—————–
Brian Fisher, the chair of entomology at the California Academy of
Sciences, and I have teamed up for a little project called
“Dissemination Lab.” and would like to hear what fun ideas you can think
up!

Examples like:
-tweet a drawing every 5 minutes for 24 hours
-Stream and annotate your fitbit data from a couple days in the field
-Put on and film a theatrical play in the field with your Animals
-Try to 3D scan your field site with a kinect at night
-Record yourself making a pizza in the evening that conveys what
activities you did in the field that day
-Make a google street-view like interface of the trails you work on
-interactive insect sonic map: google map with playable insect sound
samples mapped to specific locations

We are looking for ideas that can let us connect people on other parts
of the world with the Animals, and Environment we are working in, and
the research Practices and Activities we do in the field.

Thanks for your help! Share this around to any who might be interested
in contributing a fun idea!

The artwork Global Direct is a visionary political philosophy promoting
global participatory democracy driven by information technology and the
failure of current primitive political systems.

To illustrate the conceptual work the artist has drawn a series of fifteen
organograms for initiating a program for global participatory democracy.http://GlobalDirect.today/program

These creative diagrams are informed by research in contemporary and
emergent forms of democracy which the artist conducted and integrates as
part of the artwork. Furthermore, the artist promotes Global Direct through
designing a political poster campaign to popularize its visions.http://GlobalDirect.today/campaign

Akin to a traditional political campaign, posters are disseminated
throughout public walls in several cities and consistently feature the
campaign’s political symbol beside each slogan. In the poster, a clear sky
visually represents a bright future full of new possibilities above the
clouds.

Global Direct researches in pursuit of a new advanced version of democracy,
where everyone can take part in local and global governance, justice, and
economy. For this new political civilization, Global Direct aims to inspire
new protocols, procedures, and policies that can cope with the social
complexity, crises, and speed of contemporary life. These issues are
addressed in the artist’s theoretical essay.http://GlobalDirect.today/about

Combining multiple voices and ideas about alternative modes of advanced
participatory and global democracy, the documentation on the website
includes academic publications, links to organizations, and articles that
influenced the creation of the project.http://GlobalDirect.today/today

As part of its documentary component, the artist produced over ten video
statements by visionaries close to the ideas promoted by Global Direct. The
collection of short video statements are available on the website, offering
a compelling overview of the potentials of an ideal society.http://GlobalDirect.today/statements

The website also presents the artist’s research into social sciences for
comparing the political structures of several countries, which are
presented through many charts that diagram different governmental functions
and features.http://GlobalDirect.today/yesterday

Through this painstaking investigation the artist was able to analyze
common and specific mechanics of contemporary governance and reassemble
them with new organograms drawn in order to suggest the creative political
alternative proposed by the project.

The fifteen diagrams created for the project are presented via large prints
as an installation for art galleries. Each print indicates a single area of
governance and social structure.http://paolocirio.net/work/global-direct/#pics

These diagrams drawn by the artists are the core of the artwork, describing
the political program of Global Direct, as the ultimate utopic vision,
directly inspired by the multiple perspectives found through research on
prevailing political systems, theories, and alternative ideas about
advanced forms of democracy.

Global Direct is a 2014 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.
in NY, U.S., for its Turbulence.org website, which is made possible with
funding from the Jerome Foundation.

Global Direct has been especially supported by DOX Centre for Contemporary
Art in Prague and Lunatici Cultural A.P.S Association through the
Municipality of Parma, Italy.

This exhibition aims to explore the histories of media art after the real and seemingly permanent entry of the digital into our lives. It does so beginning from the beginning and looking at the first attempts, first digital artistic products of the 1960s and 1970s. It attempts to read from the present perspective the histories that were written with each event, each research and artwork and that are part of the paradigm we live in now.

The exhibition has two main axes. The first one “9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering” focuses on a legendary series of performances that took place at the Regiment Armory building in New York in 1966. With performances by 10 artists, 9 Evenings is a milestone in the field of art and technology, an event where many of this field’s firsts originated. The second is about the 4th and 5th exhibitions of the (New) Tendencies movement, organized in Zagreb in 1968-69 and 1973. These two vanguard exhibitions that took place in the relative periphery of Europe at an early date and the discussion they inspired meant that the computer has come of age as an artistic medium. In collaboration with the MSU – Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb and an international network of collectors and private archives, this exhibition offers the overview of the original early digital artworks including Waldemar Cordeiro, Gustav Metzger, Vladimir Bonac(ic’, Frieder Nake among others.

There will be first time presented computer installation with anti Vietnam war slogan Nixon Murderer conceived back in 1969 by Remko Scha. First time after 35 years will be publicly presented Mobilodrom – “a vehicle producing sounds in reaction to its environment” from 1979 by Michael Fahres, now in the form of multimedia documentation.

The Off-Line Media Space, which takes up a large section of the exhibition, will offer a wide array of resources in field of media. A large collection of books, Transmediale and Art Electronica catalogs from the last 30 years as well as entire collections of the magazines Neural and Mediamatic will be on hand here. In addition, there will be three computer stations in this space dedicated solely to the voluntary endeavour of translating the rapidly growing media archive artelectronicmedia.com in Turkish. This is certainly not a one-way translation, it will also allow the works and events realized in Turkey to be archived in a universal manner.

The Off-Line Media Space will feature two additional events:
The Saturday Seminars will take place during the exhibition and aim to give the audience an opportunity to hear about media histories from a group of artists and researchers who actively contributed to these histories though artistic creation and writing.
The Wednesday conversations aim to deepen and broaden the conversation around specific topics and works. They will also provide an open and live resource as well as a space to work and converse.

Radio Astronomy is an art and science project which broadcasts sounds intercepted from space live on the internet and on the airwaves. The project is a collaboration between r a d i o q u a l i a, and radio telescopes located throughout the world. Together we are creating ‘radio astronomy’ in the literal sense – a radio station devoted to broadcasting audio from our cosmos.

Radio Astronomy has three parts:
– a sound installation
– a live on-air radio transmission
– a live online radio broadcast

Listeners will hear the acoustic output of radio telescopes live. The content of the live transmission will depend on the objects being observed by partner telescopes. On any given occasion listeners may hear the planet Jupiter and its interaction with its moons, radiation from the Sun, activity from far-off pulsars or other astronomical phenomena.

Broadcasting Sounds from Space

Radio Astronomy correlates the processes associated with broadcast radio – the transmission of audible information, and the processes of radio astronomy – the observation and analysis of radiated signals from planets, stars and other astrophysical objects. The work synthesizes these two areas. The signals from planets and stars are converted into audio and then broadcast on-line and on-air. The project is a literal interpretation of the term, ³radio astronomy². It is a radio station broadcasting audio from space.

r a d i o q u a l i a consider radio telescopes to be radio receivers, which are listening to radio signals being transmitted from planets and stars. Thinking of radio in this way radically enlarges the concept.Radio Astronomy is located within this expanded field of radio.

Many of the sounds emitted by these objects are fascinating from both an aesthetic and conceptual perspective, prompting comparisons with avant-garde music and electronic sound art. Yet very few people have heard these sounds, considering space to be silent, rather than the rich acoustic environment it turns out to be.

In March 2014, the web celebrated its twenty-fifth birthday. This vast information resource is of enormous importance to scholars, both as a primary source and as a means of networking and communication. It is, however, strikingly ephemeral, and much important data has already been lost. The archiving of this vast range of material, so that it is accessible to both contemporary and future researchers, increasingly occupies national memory institutions, and researchers are also beginning to realise and explore its value. This conference seeks to explore the potential of web archives for scholarly use, to highlight innovative research, to investigate the challenges and opportunities of working with the archived web, to identify opportunities for incorporating web archives in learning and teaching, and to discuss and inform archival provision. This multi-disciplinary conference is aimed at scholars, web archiving institutions, web archivists, curators, IT-developers, companies and public institutions interested in web archiving and research using web archives. In conjunction with the overall topic of web archives, general areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
? the history(ies) of the web
? the changing structure of the web
? material culture and display in a digital context
? political and literary reputation online
? public engagement online
? patterns of culture online
? networks of social communication
? the evolution of language on the web
? the history of institutions and organisations online
? the history of social and political movements on the web
? the relationship between image, sound and text online
? the web as a forum for commemoration
? health and education online
? using web archives in the classroom
? national/international boundaries online
? approaches to web archiving
? research methods for studying the archived web
? providing access to the archived web
This list is not exhaustive, and we are keen to attract the widest possible range of topics.

Important dates:
? 8 December 2014: submissions due
? 19 January: notification of acceptance
? 9 March 2015: registrations for presenters open
? 20 April 2015: papers uploaded
? 20 April 2015: registrations for presenters close
? 27 April 2015: registrations for non-presenters open
? 11 May 2015: programme released
? 25 May 2015: registrations for non-presenters close
? 8-10 June 2015: Conference

Organised by RESAW, Aarhus University, the State and University Library (Denmark), the Royal Library (Denmark), l’Institut des sciences de la communication du CNRS, Universit? de Lille 3, the Institute of Historical Research (University of London), the University of Amsterdam, the British Library, and Leibniz University Hannover

5th ICTs and Society-Conference: The Internet and Social Media at a
Crossroads: Capitalism or Commonism? Perspectives for Critical Political
Economy and Critical Theory.http://icts-and-society.net/events/5th-icts-and-society-conference/
Part of the ISIS Summit Vienna 2015: Information Society at the
Crossroads: Response and Responsibility of the Sciences of Information.
Vienna University of Technology.
Vienna, Austria
June 3-7, 2015.

The information society has come with the promise to restore
information as a commons. The promise has not yet proven true. Instead,
we face trends towards the commercialisation and commoditisation of all
information; towards the totalisation of surveillance and the extension
of the battlefield to civil society through information warfare; towards
disinfotainment overflow; towards a collapse of the technological
civilisation itself.

The Vienna Summit is a multi-conference and is at the same time the 5th
ICTs and Society-Conference: The Internet and Social Media at a
Crossroads: Capitalism or Commonism? Perspectives for Critical Political
Economy and Critical Theory.

Given that the information society and the study of information face a
world of crisis today and are at a crossroads, also the future of the
Internet and social media are in question. The 5th ICTs and Society
Conference therefore wants to focus on the questions: What are the main
challenges that the Internet and social media are facing in capitalism
today? What potentials for an alternative, commonist Internet are there?
What are existing hindrances for such an Internet? What is the
relationship of power structures, protest movements, societal
developments, struggles, radical reforms, etc. to the Internet? How can
critical political economy and critical theory best study the Internet
and social media today?

Presentations and submissions are organised in the form of 23 panel
topics (ICT&S1-ICT&S23; please indicate the panel identification number
to which you submit in your submisison):

* ICT&S1 The Internet and Critical Theory:
What does it mean to study the Internet, social media and society today
in a critical way? What are Critical Internet Studies, Critical
Political Economy and Critical Theories of Social Media?

* ICT&S2 The Internet, Karl Marx, and Marxist Theory:
How can classical forms of critical theory and critical political
economy – e.g. the works of e.g. Karl Marx, the Frankfurt School,
Critical Political Economy of the Media and Communication, Critical and
Marxist Cultural Studies, Socialist Feminism, Theories of Imperialism,
Raymond Williams’ cultural materialism, etc – be used for understanding
the Internet and social media today?

* ICT&S3 The Internet, Commodities and Capitalism:
What is the role of the Internet and social media in the context of the
commodity logic in contemporary capitalism?

* ICT&S4 The Political Economy of Online Advertising
How can we best critically understand, analyse and combat the role of
advertising on the Internet and the role of online advertising in
capitalism? What are the problems of online advertising culture? How
would a world without advertising and an advertising-free Internet look
like?

* ICT&S5 The Internet and Power:
How do power structures, exploitation, domination, class, digital
labour, commodification of the communication commons, ideology, and
audience/user commodification, and surveillance shape the Internet and
social media? What is the relationship of exploitation and domination on
the Internet?

* ICT&S6 Raymond Williams’ Cultural Materialism and the Internet:
How can we use theoretical insights from Raymond Williams’ cultural
materialism for critically understanding the Internet and social media
today?

* ICT&S7 Dallas Smythe and the Internet:
How can we use insights from Dallas Smythe’s political economy of
communication for critically understanding the Internet and social media
today?

* ICT&S8 Critical Cultural Studies Today: Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart
and the Internet:
What is the legacy of Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart’s versions of
cultural studies for critically understanding the Internet? What kind of
cultural studies do we need in the 21st century? And what is in this
context the relationship of culture and capitalism and the relationship
of critical cultural studies to Marxist theory?

* ICT&S9 The Frankfurt School and the Internet:
How can insights of various generations of the Frankfurt School be used
for critically theorising the Internet? What are commonalities and
differences between a Frankfurt School approach and other forms of
critical theory for understanding the Internet?

* ICT&S11 The Internet and Global Capitalism:
What is the role of the Internet and social media in contemporary global
capitalism? What is the role of developing countries, especially Africa,
and emerging economies such as China and India in the world of the
Internet and social media?

* ICT&S12 The Internet and Neoliberalism with Chinese Characteristics:
Chinese WWW platforms such as Baidu, Taobao, Qq, Sina, Weibo, etc. are
besides Californian platforms the most prominent ones on the web. What
is the role of social media in Chinese capitalism? What is the role of
the Internet in networked working class struggles in China?

* ICT&S13 The Political Economy of Digital Labour:
What is digital labour and how do exploitation and surplus-value
generation work on the Internet? Which forms of exploitation and class
structuration do we find on the Internet, how do they work, what are
their commonalities and differences? How does the relation between toil
and play change in a digital world? How do classes and class struggles
look like in 21st century informational capitalism?

* ICT&S14 The Political Economy of the Internet and the Capitalist State
Today:
How does the relationship of capitalism, state power, and the Internet
look like today? What is the role of state surveillance and surveillance
ideologies in policing the crisis of capitalism? How does the
relationship of the Internet and state power’s various forms of
regulation, control, repression, violence and surveillance look like and
what is the influence of capitalism on state power and vice versa in the
context of the Internet?

* ICT&S15 Ideology Critique 2.0: Ideologies of and on the Internet:
What are ideologies of and on the Internet, web 2.0, and social media,
how do they work, and how can they be deconstructed and criticised?

* ICT&S16 Hegel 2.0: Dialectical Philosophy and the Internet:
What contradictions, conflicts, ambiguities, and dialectics shape 21st
century information society and social media? How can we use Hegel and
Marxist interpretations of Hegel for critically understanding Internet
dialectics?

* ICT&S17 Capitalism and Open Access Publishing:
What changes has academic publishing been undergoing in contemporary
capitalism? What are the potentials of academic open access publishing
for the re-organisation of the publishing world ? What problems do
non-commercial open access publishing face in capitalism and capitalist
academia? How can these problems be overcome? What are the problems of
capitalist forms of open access publishing? What progressive political
measures and demands should be made in order to foster non-commercial
open access publishing?

* ICT&S18 Class Struggles, Social Struggles and the Internet:
What is the role of counter-power, resistance, struggles, social
movements, civil society, rebellions, uproars, riots, revolutions, and
political transformations in 21st century information society and how
(if at all) are they connected to social media? What struggles are
needed in order to establish a commonist Internet and a 21st century
democratic-commonist society? How can we use critical theory for
interpreting phenomena such as online leaking, Edward Snowden,
WikiLeaks, Wikipedia, federated social networks, Anonymous, hacktivism,
Pirate Parties, privacy advocates, the free/libre/open source (FLOSS)
movement, the open source, open hardware and open content movement,
etc., and what is the relationships of such political expressions to
capitalism, anti-capitalism, liberalism, and socialism?

* ICT&S19 Critical/Radical Internet Studies, the University and Academia
Today:
What are the challenges and problems for teaching and conducting
research about the Internet a critical and radical perspective? What can
be done to overcome existing limits and problems?

* ICT&S20 The Internet and the Left:
How could a 21st century Left best look like and what is the role of the
Internet for such a Left? What is the historical, contemporary, and
possible future relationship of Critical Internet Studies and the Left?
What is the role of the Internet in left-wing movements? What problems
do such movements face in relation to the media, communications, the
Internet, and social media?

* ICT&S21 Anti-Capitalist Feminism and the Internet Today:
What is the role of and relationship of identity politics and
anti-capitalism for feminist studies of the Internet today? How can we
best study capitalist patriarchy in the context of the Internet and
social media?

* ICT&S22 The Internet, Right-Wing Extremism and Fascism Today:
How do far-right movements and parties use the Internet and social
media? How should a left-wing anti-fascist strategy that combats online
right-wing extremism look like?

* ICT&S23 An Alternative Internet:
What is a commonist/communist Internet? What is an alternative Internet?
What are alternative social media? How do they relate to the commons and
commonism as a 21st century form of communism? Which problems do
alternative Internet platforms face? What needs to be done in order to
overcome these problems?

McKenzie Wark is author of A Hacker Manifesto, The Spectacle of
Disintegration, the forthcoming I?m Very Into You ? a correspondence
with the late Kathy Acker ? and Molecular Red, among other books. The
following transcript is taken from a recent talk delivered at the
Digital Labor conference presented by The New School.

I want to start with the proposition that in a place like New York City,
we live in the over-developed world. Somehow we overshot some point of
transformation. A transformation that didn?t happen, perhaps couldn?t
happen. But in having failed to take that exit, we end up in some state
of over-development. In the over-developed world, the commodity economy
is feeding on itself, cannibalizing itself.

There is course an under-developed world, sometimes in intimate
proximity to the over-developed one. You can find it even here in New
York City. One can critique the orientalism of the fact that Willets
Point, Queens is known among New Yorkers as ?little Calcutta?, but it
really is a place without paved roads, running water, and with mostly
off the books, illegal or precarious jobs.

SatNOGS is a modular and scalable stack for Satellite Ground Station implementation. Fully based on open source technologies and open standards, it provides interoperability with existing or future subsystems.

A Global Management Network is the key part of our stack, connecting multiple observers with multiple ground stations enabling tracking and monitoring of satellites from multiple locations around the world. The data gathered will be publicly accessible through the network website.

The SatNOGS Network website has had the focus in terms of development from our software team in the past week. While the major functionality (observation calculation and scheduling) is coming along nicely (thanks to libraries like python-ephem) we are also delivering other needed functionality. This time it was a public, well documented, open API.

Based on Django REST Framework, we deployed an API that matches our current DB model and enables other applications or services to query SatNOGS Network for information about Ground Stations, Observations, Data, Transponders or even Satellites.

Earlier this year I found myself at the conference ?Off the Press?, organised in Rotterdam by the Institute of Network Cultures as part of the Digital Publishing Toolkit.

It was great to have so many perspectives on digital publications, and to be able to reflect together on standards and workflows for digital publication that allow collaboration between authors, editors and designers.

It made me want to write a blog post to contribute to this, reflecting on a tendency that has since long bugged me. For me, in the field of New Media Studies, there is sometimes an undue reverence for plain text?a reverence that is appropriated from Hacker Culture. In Rotterdam, this tendency was for me exemplified in the proposal to use a plain text format called Markdown as a basis for a workflow.

The 12th edition of the Piksel Festival takes place in Bergen (NO)
November 13th- 16th 2014. This years theme PIKSEL14 ? BeO/Art
embraces the organic and biological, linking it to free and open source
technology to create new forms of artistic expressions: creative
tinkering with organic tissue, life processes, live organisms and
bacteria. Bioartists and biohackers return to Piksel and Bergen to
guide participants into the realm of Bioelectronix.

PIKSEL :: FREE AS IN ART!
————————————————–
Piksel is an international event for artists and developers working with
free and open technologies in artistic practice.
Part workshop, part festival, it is organized in Bergen, Norway, and
involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging
ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops,
performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of free
technologies & art.
————————————————–

Abstract:
This talk will discuss systems theory and cybernetics with respect to
their impact on intellectual history, art history and theory, and
contemporary art and design practices. The talk will draw from and
introduce my forthcoming book, Systems, part of the Documents of
Contemporary Art series published by Whitechapel/MIT. Historian/theorist
Dr. Edward Shanken and artist/researcher Dr. Yolande Harris will share
complementary and contrasting perspectives on current experimental art
practices. Shanken?s talk will address collaborative practices at the
intersections of art, science, and technology, focusing on the potential
of transdisciplinary research to generate innovation and invention. Harris
will present a lecture/performance on sound and the environment, weaving
together examples of her artwork with her theories of techno-intuition and
sonic consciousness, in which expanded forms of awareness emerge through
technological media and critical listening techniques. The audiences will
have an opportunity to discuss these ideas with the speakers, generating
an interdisciplinary dialog between art, theory, and contemporary social
practices.

Bio:
Edward A. Shanken writes and teaches about the entwinement of art,
science, and technology with a focus on interdisciplinary practices
involving new media. He is Visiting Associate Professor of Digital and
Experimental Media Arts (DXARTS) at University of Washington and a member
of the Media Art History faculty at the Donau University in Krems,
Austria. Prior academic posts include Dorothy Kayser Hohenberg Chair of
Excellence in Art History at University of Memphis, Universitair Docent of
New Media at University of Amsterdam, Executive Director of the
Information Science + Information Studies program at Duke University, and
Professor of Art History and Media Theory at Savannah College of Art and
Design. Fellowships include National Endowment for the Arts, American
Council of Learned Societies, UCLA, University of Bremen, and Washington
University in St. Louis. Dr. Shanken earned a Ph.D. and MA in Art History
at Duke University, an MBA at Yale University, and a BA at Haverford
College. Recent and forthcoming publications include essays on art and
software, art historiography, land art, investigatory art, sound art and
ecology, and bridging the gap between new media and contemporary art. His
book, Inventing the Future: Art, Electricity, New Media was published in
Spanish in 2013 as Inventar el Futuro, with Portuguese and Chinese
translations forthcoming in paper and E-text. He edited and wrote the
introduction to a collection of essays by Roy Ascott, Telematic Embrace:
Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness (University of
California Press, 2003). His critically praised survey, Art and Electronic
Media (Phaidon Press, 2009) has been expanded with an extensive,
multimedia Online Companion: www.artelectronicmedia.com.

Yolande Harris is an artist and scholar engaged with sound, its image and
its role in relating humans and their technologies to the environment. Her
artistic research projects consider techniques of navigation, sonification
of data, sound worlds outside the human hearing range, and underwater
bioacoustics. They take the form of audio-visual installations and
performances, instruments, walks, performative lectures and writings. She
weaves together her artwork with her theories of techno-intuition and
sonic consciousness, in which expanded forms of awareness emerge through
technological media and critical listening techniques.
website: http://artexetra.wordpress.com/http://yolandeharris.net/

I can think of many differences between digital objects and the sorts
of things we can carry in our hands, but one that matters to me quite
a bit is how is the object “handled” and in what way does this
handling situate it within a world. There’s a way in which an icon
within an an interface or authoring environment or gamespace or
whatever?. here, the object corresponds signifies some relational
understanding that we carry with us from our daily lives. (I will set
this thing down here, it will be there later when I go to pick it up.
When I pick it up, I will do this with it. Etc.).

Then there are symbolic things that we use in written worlds. I am
telling a story, I am going to place a thing here, so the reader knows
that the thing is there and when they read this, they will provide the
relative understanding needed to make sense of the story. This kind
of remembering of a coded thing elicits from us some memory of lived
experience with things that are sufficient for us to conjure up the
coded representation of experience (or not, in which case, we do not
understand. but, often, can figure it out even with really messed up
writing: “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is
Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova
Milkbar making up rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark
chill winter bastard though dry.”).

But with code written for a computer, the objects are “handled” in a
different way, not by a person and a bodily resonance, but by a
machine that is going to “act” on it. There is an implied milieu that
they inhabit, with layers of context that make the objects work in
relation to other ideas. Something left in one place is not a
singular thing, but a representative of an ideal form that is
circumscribed by the logic of the milieu. Instead of “my coffee mug”
sitting on this desk right here where I can knock it onto my keyboard
(which actually just happened), there is a coffee mug spilling coffee
on a keyboard. Any singularity it represents is an expression of the
totality of the world which is contained within the memory of the
machine?. but any singularity I experience with regards to a story I
read does not contain the whole world. I am probably not thinking
clearly about this. But I do wonder about the difference between how
we “hold” things in our memory, how we “act” on these concepts, how
these concepts are “connected” to the world that they inhabit.

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 10:47 PM, Mark Marino <markcmarino@gmail.com> wrote:
> ———-empyre- soft-skinned space———————-
> I’m going to return this line of inquiry to computer source code, since that’s an aspect of certain digital objects that I feel fairly confident in separating from analogue ones (thinking of Christian’s struggle to define the “‘ontological’ and ‘practical’ differences between the sorts of objects – digital/analogue”). Perhaps there are examples of analog objects that are programmed, but I’m going to bracket them for now.
>
> As we pursue the ontological distinctions between digital and analogue objects and their relation to memory, how does computer source code distinguish software in relation to memory?
>
> In the sense of code, some of the implications are obvious. Comments in code remind us of what someone (possibly ourselves) was trying to do or had done. Variable and function names can also serve as memory cues. The architecture of a program can be thought of as a remnant of they way we conceived of a certain process, a material manifestation. But what of the source code in general?
>
> But take this Sketchpad Demo by Ivan Sutherland
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX9yvq5F4Wo
>
> I’ve been told that Alan Kay considers this to be one of the most important moments in computer history. In the video Sutherland is seen working a device lined with switches with one hand and drawing geometric shapes with a kind of stylus on the screen with the other. With a few gestures (that seem to cover a magician’s level of familiarity with the interface), Sutherland is able to create a vector-based image of a movable object subject to a physics that can interoperate with other objects.
>
> Sutherland is, I am told, programming (which destabilizes a distinction we might have between drawing and programming or using an interface and programming). However, what’s the one thing his programming does not leave (as far as the demo indicates)? A trace of the creation process. This is the obstacle to using such a language or environment for programming. There is an expectation that interacting with software objects requires this trace. That does not mean it is not a programming language, haptic and visual though it may be, it just means it doesn’t meet contemporary expectations of programming languages. It seems more like what we’d consider an authoring environment, like Flash.
>
> And so for our discussion of digital objects, particularly software objects, this example (and its responses) demonstrates the degree to which the code and the program (and this accessible, discrete memory of the process) are seen as fundamental requirements of software. The ability to leave a trace that can be altered, revised.
>
> Now where do we see that in our conceptualization of memory? How does code become iconic of the modern prosthesis outside ourselves to which a number of you have referred? It certainly seems to hold to Sean’s sense of memory in the digital relying on the “shifting frequency of future iterations.” For some reason I am put in mind of “auto-save” and again versioning and histories — yet I think these are probably too facile analogies to the notion of a recorded procedure. I guess my large question is: how does this sense of or expectation for a source code trace affect broader cultural and personal psychological concepts of memory?
>
> Best,
> Mark
>

Certainly seems that the hipster grassroots bottom up ethic of the
hacker is being brought to new places. Nettime participants have for
some time been sceptical of the ‘hacker ethic’; was it now being
colonised? I remember a while back on this list discussion of security
exploits, the remark that now days the State was more interested to
keep exploits hidden and activists are the one most interested in
making exploits public. Quite a reversal where the underdog (once
associated with the hackers hidden exploit) becomes the locksmith
calling for public discussion of security in the name of protecting
democracy partisans in the middle-east.

The biohacker movement gives a sort of grassroots chic to the biotech
industry but they aren’t really a maker’s movement, they don’t hold
the means of production, only a few toys given to them by industry
(you can make a bacteria that smells like spearmint). Key parts of
the knowledge process needed for production of your own organisms
(and of course the capital necessary to do so) are not distributed.
At conferences like IGEM, kids are encouraged to think they are cool
hackers, while the biotech industry recruits them to live the rest of
their life imprisoned in a software programmers cubicle.

but I don’t think it is just the PR fakeness of the biohacker
ethic being sold to young computer savvy kids. It’s not just that
corporate power controls all the cards and if you hack, you hack for
them. Something new is leaking out. I think there is a qualitative
difference between the ethic of hacking to learn about how your
computer system works and the ethic of treating life as if it were
a machine. Hacking life (into pieces). The ideology that everything
is a machine manipulated in the same way that you program your
computer (lego blocks of life, assemble or rearrange them yourself,
program your brain). The original hacker ethic was domain specific.
computers/phones/calculation and communication systems. But the
biohacker ethic seems to have leaked out of its vat like an escaped
microorganism now travelling (contaminating) the natural environment
away from its factory site starting point

MONTREAL, 29 Oct. 2014???On the eve of the largest annual gathering
of synthetic biologists in the world, ETC Group and the Bioeconomies
Media Project are launching a new animated explanation of the workings
of this emerging ???SynBio??? industry, often dubbed extreme genetic
engineering. Thousands of scientists, students and vendors will
converge at the International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM)
Jamboree in Boston to share the latest advancements in what has become
a multi billion dollar industry based on the industrialization of life
at the molecular level.

Increasingly, scientists and civil society are sounding the alarm
about the risks posed by unregulated commercialization of SynBio???s
untested, experimental and unprecedented manipulation of life forms.
The new ten minute video, produced in collaboration with award-winning
Canadian animator Marie-Jos??e Saint-Pierre and narrated by ETC???s
Jim Thomas, is the first output from a new Bioeconomies Media Project.
Featuring work of researchers from Canadian universities and funded
by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the
video provides a succinct introduction to the science and emerging
industry of synthetic biology as well as some of the ethical,
biosafety and economic impacts that these “genetically engineered
machines” may have.

“The synthetic biology industry is already a multibillion dollar
enterprise involving some of the worlds largest food, chemical and
agribusiness companies,” said Jim Thomas, ETC’s Programme Director.
“The leaders of that industry are targeting markets supplied by small
farmers in the around the world; this is likely to have real negative
impacts on poorer communities in the global south.”

SynBio companies have commercialized several products already,
including a vanilla substitute grown by synthetically modified yeast,
a coconut oil replacement produced by engineered algae, and engineered
versions of patchouli and vetiver fragrances. Less than two weeks ago,
194 nations at the United Nations convention on Biological Diversity
unanimously urged governments to establish precautionary regulations
and to assess synthetic biology organisms, components and products.
Many countries had called for a complete global moratorium on the
release of synthetic biology organisms.

People who have witnessed the emergence of DIYbio (the do-it-yourself
biology network that was started back in 2008 in the US) say that the
direct intervention of the FBI was key in shaping the movement. The FBI
attended DIYbio meetings, organized meetings of its own and flew
amateurs there from all over the world, etc.

Rather than a biosecurity concern, this was the FBI acknowledging they
couldn’t fuck up again after what they did to Steve Kurtz and the
Critical Art Ensemble (if you don’t remember the story: it happened in
NY during the antrax attacks, google it). Yet as a result of this, the
movement has taken the form of a very cautious, a-critical subject that
is going towards mostly educational or entrepreneurial paths. Sara
Tocchetti from LSE is writing a great piece on this but I don’t think
it’s out there yet.

Of course do-it-yourself biology’s current shape is also linked to other
genealogies, i.e. diybio was mostly born within scientific institutions
and with their paternal blessing and is currently being co-opted and
integrated at all institutional levels (museums, start-ups, scientific
crowdsourcing projects). Althought it might be scientifically poor,
biohacking is very important to the synbio industry, as it portraits it
as a friendly, fun, open, creative activity and also reverses the
spectrum of life privatisation through its copyleft ethos. It also
creates new hopes after decades of promises (remember the human genome?)
that have been only partially matched so far, to say the least.

In fact I see synthetic biology as a project for re-moralizing biotech,
and diybio is an integral part of it – which might help explain why
high-end biologists care about those kids playing with cell cultures.
Now the question is: will distributed creativity and
hyper-individualized markets appear in biology? Well, probably no bio
commercial breakthrough will come from a garage, but a new soul for the
biotech industry is created there, and those references to a hacker
ethos are a big part of it

Computational tools and media, from traditional computers and software to the latest wearable artifacts, sensors, haptic interfaces and more, have dramatically transformed the landscape of arts, design, and several other cultural forms.

xCoAx is an exploration of this environment in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive x factor that connects them all.

xCoAx is meant as a hub for the exchange of ideas and the discovery of interdisciplinary and international synergies, with the participation of a diverse confluence of computer scientists, media practitioners and theoreticians working on the frontiers of digital arts and culture.

Our focus has always been on critical and stimulating intersections: between the computable and the uncomputable, the communicable and the incommunicable, the chaos of creativity and the rules of algorithms, the human and the machine, in a constant search for new directions in aesthetics.

The trail-blazing first edition of xCoAx took place in Bergamo, Italy in 2013 and was followed by an even richer 2014 edition in Porto, Portugal. They say ?third time?s the charm?, and with such a past we could not be more excited for what?s to come.

Important dates
Submissions open: 1 October 2014
Submission deadline: 18 January 2015
Notifications: 14 March 2015
Registration deadline for first authors: 14 April 2015
Delivery of final versions for publication: 14 April 2015
Exhibition opening: 24 June 2015
Conference: 25-26 June 2015

Additional information and submission details

* All works must be submitted via EasyChair ? https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=xcoax2015
* Submissions must be original and will be rigorously reviewed by an international and multidisciplinary scientific committee, in a process that will assess originality, relevance, aesthetic and technical achievements;
* Reviewing will be double-blind for papers, single-blind for artworks and performances, please omit all information about the authors in double-blind submissions;
* Papers may be up to 10 pages long, and short-papers up to 4 pages long, following the format in the Word template ? http://xcoax.org/xcoax2015template.docx ;
* Artworks and performances should be accompanied by a two-page abstract formatted using the same template and by one or more URLs for access to relevant media assets;
* Submissions should be presented as .pdf files with all the media files embedded or linked to online resources. Final versions for publication should be delivered in .docx with all the images and other media files attached as independent files;
* All images and media assets must be cleared for publication by the authors;
* At least one of the authors of each contribution must register to the conference before the first author registration deadline in order for the work to be published in the proceedings;
* xCoAx?s working language is English;
* xCoAx?s conference proceedings (with ISBN) will be published online;
* Please contact the program chairs at info@xcoax.org with any questions regarding submissions.

Conference format

Wednesday, June 24: Opening of the exhibition, reception cocktail.
Thursday, June 25: Conference and keynote. Presentations will be organized in panels chaired by a moderator that will lead a final discussion with authors and audience. A guest keynote will close the day.
Thursday, June 25, evening: Conference dinner.
Friday, June 26: Conference panels and short-paper session. Artworks and performances presentations. Presentations and discussion will be organized in the afternoon, networking authors and audience.
Friday, June 26, evening: Performances.
Friday, June 26, Night: Algorave.

Web25
Special issue of New Media & Society on the Web?s first 25 years

In August 2016 the World Wide Web can celebrate its 25th anniversary. Or can it?

No doubt that the World Wide Web ? or simply: the Web ? has played an important role in the communicative infrastructure of most societies since the beginning of the 1990s, but when did the Web actually start? And how has the Web developed? These are the two main areas of study that this special issue intends to investigate.

The start of the Web
As with any other new media form it is difficult to determine in a clear cut manner when it was invented. Was it the first time it was thought of? Or when it was made publicly or commercially accessible? Or? In the case of the Web its 25th anniversary was widely celebrated in March 2014, thus celebrating that Tim Berners-Lee circulated his “Information Management: A Proposal” in 1989. But one could also maintain that the Web only started when it was named “WorldWideWeb” (October 1990), when the first Web server and the first Web page were created (November 1990), or when the WWW software was made available on the net, posted on alt.hypertext (August 1991) (cf. http://www.w3.org/History.html). Or maybe the Web started years before, with Paul Otlet?s Mundaneum in the beginning of the 20th century, with Vannevar Bush?s ideas about the Memex in 1945, or with the invention of HyperCard in the late 1980s? These questions all revolve around underlaying questions such as ?what is a start?? ? ?when is something ?new??? ? ?and to what extent is it relevant to ask for clear cut dates?? This is one set of issues related to the history of the Web that this special issue of New Media & Society intends to explore and question.

The historical development of the Web
Despite the fact that it can be difficult ? and interesting ? to investigate the beginning of the Web, the Web was invented after all, and it has been with us for approximately 25 years now. What has it looked like, and how has it been used? Who and what has affected its development? These are some of the general questions regarding the history of the Web, but they can be narrowed and detailed in a number of ways, for instance by focusing on specific areas of society ? politics, culture, news, business, etc. ? on specific demographic groups, on different regions on the globe, on the technical infrastructure, or on software. In addition, the historical development of the Web not only calls for empirical studies, historiographical issues are also highly relevant to address, that is theoretical and methodological topics related to the writing of the histories of the Web. The historical development of the Web as well as historiographical questions related to the history of the Web constitute the second area of interest for this special issue of New Media & Society.

Papers must address one of these two areas of study regarding the Web ? or they may address both, and even focus on their interplay ? as well as they must adopt a historical approach.

With a view to sparking discussion, the point of departure of the special issue is that what should be celebrated is the date when the Web was made publicly availabe, that is August 1991 ? but contributors are welcome to question this.

Literature
– Banks, M.A. (2008). On the Way to the Web: The secret History of the Internet and its Founders. Berkeley: Apress.
– Berners-Lee, T. (1999). Weaving the Web: The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web by its Inventor. London: Orion.
– Brunton, F. (2013). Spam: A shadow History of the Internet. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
– Br?gger, N. (Ed.) (2010). Web History. New York: Peter Lang.
– Burns, M. & Br?gger, N. (Eds.) (2012). Histories of Public Service Broadcasters on the Web. New York: Peter Lang.
– Carey, J. & Elton, M.C.J. (2010). When Media are New: Understanding the Dynamics of New Media Adoption and Use. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
– Gillies, J. & R. Cailliau. (2000). How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
– Gitelman, L. (2006). Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
– Park, D.W., Jankowski, N.W. & Jones, S. (2011). The long History of New Media: Technology, Historiography, and contextualizing Newness. New York: Peter Lang.
– Poole, H.W. (Ed.) (2005). The Internet: A historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA.

Possible topics
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

? Broad as well as specific histories of the development of the Web, focusing on, for
instance, technology, graphic design, culture, politics, etc.
? The history of sharing syndication, or viral spread
? The development of blogs and microblogs
? The history of one website, or types of websites
? Web elements transcending more websites, for instance the use of images, sound, or video on specific types of websites (news, social network sites, other)
? The Web?s interplay with traditional media (books, newspapers, film, radio, television)
? The big trends, developments of entire national Webs, or of the entire Web
? The history of spam, or of hacking
? The role of familar, but often unaknowledged Web features such as search engines, browsers, and plugins
? The use of the Web as a historical source, for instance archived Web
? The history of events on the Web, such as political elections, catastrophies, sports events, etc.
? What is ?new?? ? intersections of ?old? and ?new? on the Web
? The gouvernance of the Web (on a global, regional, or national scale)
? Defining moments and events on the Web, regarding inventions as well as use
? Social networking sites
? The need for and use of digitally supported methods and digital analytical tools
? The history of the Web in the larger framework of cultural history

Abstract and time schedule
Please email a 700 word abstract proposal, along with a short author biography, no later than 15 November 2014 to nb@dac.au.dk.

On the basis of these abstracts invitations to submit articles will be sent out no later than begin January 2015.

Final selected articles will be due 1 June 2015 and will undergo peer review following the usual procedures of New Media & Society. Invitation to submit a full article does not therefore guarantee acceptance into the special issue. The special issue will be published in 2016.

The special issue is edited by Niels Br?gger, the Centre for Internet Studies, and NetLab, Aarhus University, Denmark, nb@dac.au.dk.

A Little History of the World Wide Web

1945

Vannevar Bush writes an article in Atlantic Monthly about a photo-electrical-mechanical device called a Memex, for memory extension, which could make and follow links between documents on microfiche

1960s

Doug Engelbart prototypes an “oNLine System” (NLS) which does hypertext browsing editing, email, and so on. He invents the mouse for this purpose. See the Bootstrap Institute library.

Ted Nelson coins the word Hypertext in A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate. 20th National Conference, New York, Association for Computing Machinery, 1965. See also: Literary Machines. Note: There used to be a link here to “Hypertext and Hypermedia: A Selected Bibliography” by Terence Harpold, but the site hosting the resource did not maintain the link.

Andy van Dam and others build the Hypertext Editing System and FRESS in 1967.

1980

While consulting for CERN June-December of 1980, Tim Berners-Lee writes a notebook program, “Enquire-Within-Upon-Everything”, which allows links to be made between arbitrary nodes. Each node had a title, a type, and a list of bidirectional typed links. “ENQUIRE” ran on Norsk Data machines under SINTRAN-III. See: Enquire user manual as scanned images or as HTML page(alt).

1990

Mike Sendall, Tim’s boss, Oks the purchase of a NeXT cube, and allows Tim to go ahead and write a global hypertext system.

October

Tim starts work on a hypertext GUI browser+editor using the NeXTStep development environment. He makes up “WorldWideWeb” as a name for the program. (See the first browser screenshot) “World Wide Web” as a name for the project (over Information Mesh, Mine of Information, and Information Mine).

Initial WorldWideWeb program development continues on the NeXT (TBL) . This was a “what you see is what you get” (wysiwyg) browser/editor with direct inline creation of links. The first web server was nxoc01.cern.ch, later called info.cern.ch, and the first web page http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html Unfortunately CERN no longer supports the historical site. Note from this era too, the least recently modified web page we know of, last changed Tue, 13 Nov 1990 15:17:00 GMT (though the URI changed.)

Plenary session demonstration to the HEP community at CHEP’92 in Annecy (FR).

November

Jump back in time to a snapshot of the WWW Project Page as of 3 Nov 1992 and the WWW project web of the time, including the list of all 26 resoanably reliable servers, NCSA’s having just been added, but no sign of Mosaic.

NCSA release first alpha version of Marc Andreessen’s “Mosaic for X”. Computing seminar at CERN. The University of Minnesota announced that they would begin to charge licensing fees for Gopher’s use, which caused many volunteers and employees to stop using it and switch to WWW.

Over 200 known HTTP servers. The European Commission, the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and CERN start the first Web-based project of the European Union (DG XIII): WISE, using the Web for dissemination of technological information to Europe’s less favoured regions.

December

WWW receives IMA award. John Markov writes a page and a half on WWW and Mosaic in “The New York Times” (US) business section. “The Guardian” (UK) publishes a page on WWW, “The Economist” (UK) analyses the Internet and WWW.
Robert Cailliau gets go-ahead from CERN management to organise the First International WWW Conference at CERN.

1994

January

O’Reilly, Spry, etc announce “Internet in a box” product to bring the Web into homes.

First meeting with European Industry and the European Consortium branch, at the European Commission, Brussels.

16 December

CERN Council approves unanimously the construction of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) accelerator, CERN’s next machine and competitor to the US’ already defunct SSC (Superconducting Supercollider). Stringent budget conditions are however imposed. CERN thus decides not to continue WWW development, and in concertation with the European Commission and INRIA (the Institut National pour la Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, FR) transfers the WebCore project to INRIA.

1995

February

the Web is the main reason for the theme of the G7 meeting hosted by the European Commission in the European Parliament buildings in Brussels (BE).

March

CERN holds a two-day seminar for the European Media (press, radio, TV), attended by 250 reporters, to show WWW. It is demonstrated on 60 machines, with 30 pupils from the local International High School helping the reporters “surf the Web”.

If you include Benjamin you pretty much have to include the entire Frankfurt school. But I don’t think Postman would have liked that. Which I find strange, because he liked Ellul who was just as “marxist” “materialist” and “anti-Religious” as most of the the aetheist Marxists that Postman seemed to disrespect. I would go so far as to say that Ellul’s intellectual work aimed to point-out that the division between “materialist” and “Christian” is nothing less than a bad infinity.

On Oct 21, 2014 12:58 PM, Bob Logan <logan@physics.utoronto.ca> wrote:
Dear MEAniks – I wanted to bring to your attention this book on Walter Benjamin described in the forwarded email below. I believe Benjamin deserves a spot on the line of fame on the MEA Web site

Sadly his career was cut short by the holocaust (Benjamin committed suicide in Portbou at the French?Spanish border while attempting to escape from the Nazis) but his memory needs to be honoured.

Here is part of the Wikipedia entry on Benjamin

Walter Bendix Sch?nflies Benjamin (German: [?valt? ?b?njami?n];[1] 15 July 1892 ? 26 September 1940)[2]was a German literary critic, philosopher, social critic, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, historical materialism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism. He is associated with the Frankfurt School.
Among Benjamin’s major works as a literary critic are essays on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka,Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Charles Baudelaire, and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust’s ? la recherche du temps perdu.
His turn to Marxism in the 1930s was partly due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht, who developed a theater notable for its Verfremdungseffekt (defamiliarization, alienation). An earlier influence was friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the academic study of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism.
Influenced by the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815?87), Benjamin coined the term “auratic perception”, denoting the aesthetic faculty by means of which civilization may recover an appreciation of myth.[3] Scholars often cite Benjamin’s most famous works, especially the essays “The Task of the Translator” (1923) and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936).

> From: Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs@uti.at>
> Date: October 21, 2014 5:58:20 AM EDT
> To: discussion-icts-and-society-net@icts-and-society.net
> Subject: [ICTs-and-Society] Walter Benjamin and the media today: A talk by Jaeho Kang (CAMRI Seminar, Oct 29)
> Reply-To: christian.fuchs@uti.at
>
> Phantasmagoria of Urban Spectacle:
> Walter Benjamin and Media Theory Today
> Jaeho Kang
> Wed, Oct 29, 14:00
> University of Westminster
> Harrow Campus
> Room A7.01
>
> Registration is possible per email to christian.fuchs@uti.at until Oct 27
>
> http://www.westminster.ac.uk/camri/research-seminars/phantasmagoria-of-urban-spectacle-walter-benjamin-and-media-theory-today
>
> Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is one of the most original and perceptive German literary and cultural critics, but his unique insight into the profound impact of the media on modernity has received a good deal less attention.
>
> Based on his book ‘Walter Benjamin and the Media: The Spectacle of Modernity’ (2014), Jaeho Kang will talk about Benjamin?s critical and provocative writings on the intersection between media and modern experience with particular reference to phantasmagoria, aesthetic public space, and urban spectacle. In so doing, he will clarify Benjamin?s distinctive and enduring contribution to contemporary media studies.
>
> Before joining SOAS in 2012, Jaeho Kang taught as Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies and Film at the New School in New York (2005-2012) and was the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in the Institut f?r Sozialforschung at the University of Frankfurt (2004-2005). He received his PhD in sociology from the University of Cambridge (2003).
>
> He has tried to bring theoretical contributions of critical theory to the development of East Asian media and cultural studies and published a number of articles on critical theory of media and political communication in English, Korean, German, and Portuguese.
>
> His research has recently focused more attention on the East Asian context of media culture with particular reference to media spectacle, urban space and screen culture. The book ‘Walter Benjamin and the Media: The Spectacle of Modernity’ (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014) came out in summer 2014.
>

I?m usually a happy lurker on this mailing list but for whatever reason this discussion has got my hackles up.

If you love and care about science it is easy to be lulled into forgetting that Science has two intertwined histories. One is a beautiful quest for knowledge using a method of reasoning that over time leads to deep insights into the nature of our universe. This is the one we talk about most of the time. The other is a secular religion that worships a historical-social conception of technological progress and power – knowledge being a particularly potent form of power. This is history we would like forget or at least ignore.

One of those histories gave up Darwin. The other gave us Social Darwinist who measured skulls to scientifically prove that European Men were ?more intelligent? than women or their colonial subjects and created human zoos right up until WWII for scientifically curious public. The Social Darwinists are not isolated incident but part of reoccurring historical pattern that stretches back at least to the Renaissance.

I having been working art project in which I have been doing a lot of reading from European historical record. This whole discussion thread reads like Church fathers discussing heterodoxy. And yes this discussion also reads like many 18th and 19th scientific journals that I plowed through filled with culturally biased pseudo-science alongside real research about the natural world.

I don?t believe in ghosts and gods, prayer, miracles, eternal life, predestination, faith-healing, exorcism, burned witches, winged humanoids, sin, punishment, heaven, hell, voodoo either. Unfortunately Science is riddled with its own superstitions not the least of which is desperation for certainty. It easy to forget in the euphoria during periods of technological progress like today that in reality it has taken centuries of work by some of the greatest minds ever to understand how little we actually know.

For example how little we know about even basic material processes. Look at the Standard model in physics. In order to make the equation work and explain the universe requires the inferred existence of something on the order of 68.3% dark energy and 26.8% dark matter Realistically, we can only measure a small portion of the rest. Forget biology, we don?t even understand completely how cancer works much less the brain. Neuroscience, although exciting, is in its infancy, the number and complexity of connections in the brain being orders of magnitude larger than the number of atoms in the known universe. You can quibble with me about using wikipedia as a easy source or percentages and exact numbers but that doesn?t add a drop to the small sum of human knowledge. When Physics the HARDEST of the sciences can only possibly measure around 5% of the universe isn?t time for some humbleness in the face of reality?.

I believe that eventually we will, with the scientific method, discover those answers, but that is a belief. It is a belief every bit as superstitions and illogical in its own way as those of ghosts and gods. The universe may be filled with black swans of all sorts that may mean the scientific project itself is a fool?s quest. Let us hope for better.

There is also another uncomfortable truth lurking here. Most of the major problems we face as humans, ranging from global warming, environmental degradation to still constant threat of nuclear war arose from the superstitions of science not from the superstitions of ghost hunters and UFO quacks. Those problems will need science to fix. Yet how can scientists speak with credibility about these problems, if they refuse to knowledge the elephant in the room? Attacking the relatively harmless, if illogical, beliefs of others without acknowledging the consequences of your own illogical beliefs isn?t just inconsistent, it could now potentially threaten our ability to survive as a species.

I don?t believe that those posting in this discussion are ignorant neo-Social Darwinists, or lobbyists for the weapons and petrochemical industries either. I believe this discussion is meant in good faith. Faith here is a key word. However the way scientists generally learn the history of Science contributes both to scientific progress and to a certain groupthink. The bulk of the history of Science is resides in nasty blind alleys of cultural prejudice which science majors are rarely taught about or are taught in a way that minimize the impact on the triumphant march of scientific progress (now there is a fairytale.) Unfortunately that groupthink often makes it difficult for scientists to understand how the rest of the world sees them as a group. Even how their rhetorical methods actively discourage many rational people from accepting any or certain parts of the good scientific evidence available. If there is any point in an artist who cares about science contributing in a!
discussion like Yasmine, it is because artists do not approach the history of ideas from that same blinkered perspective. Our blinkers are entirely different, but that is another discussion.

With an escalating environmental crisis and an unprecedented increase of
ICT diversity and use, it is more crucial than ever to understand the
underlying material aspects of the ICT infrastructure. This special issue
therefore asks the question: What are the true material and
socio-environmental costs of the global ICT infrastructure?

In a recent paper (Fuchs 2013) as well as in the book Digital Labour and
Karl Marx (Fuchs 2014), Christian Fuchs examined the complex web of
production relations and the new division of digital labour that makes
possible the vast and cheap ICT infrastructure as we know it. The analysis
partly revealed that ICT products and infrastructure can be said to embody
slave-like and other extremely harsh conditions that perpetually force mine
and assembly workers into conditions of dependency. Expanding this
argument, the WWF reported (Reed and Miranda 2007) that mining in the Congo
basin poses considerable threats to the local environment in the form of
pollution, the loss of biodiversity, and an increased presence of
business-as-usual made possible by roads and railways. Thus ICTs can be
said to be not at all immaterial because the ICT infrastructure under the
given economic conditions can be said to embody as its material foundations
slave-like working conditions, various class relations and undesirable
environmental consequences.

At the same time, the emerging digital commons provide a new and promising
platform for social developments, arguably enabled by the progressive
dynamics of ICT development. These are predominantly manifested as
commons-based peer production, i.e., a new mode of collaborative, social
production (Benkler 2006); and grassroots digital fabrication or
community-driven makerspaces, i.e., forms of bottom-up, distributed
manufacturing. The most well known examples of commons-based peer
production are the free/open source software projects and the free
encyclopaedia Wikipedia. While these new forms of social organisation are
immanent in capitalism, they also have the features to challenge these
conditions in a way that might in turn transcend the dominant system
(Kostakis and Bauwens 2014).

Following this dialectical framing, we would like to call for papers for a
special issue of tripleC that will investigate how we can understand and
balance the perils and promises of ICTs in order to make way for a just and
sustainable paradigm. We seek scholarly articles and commentaries that
address any of the following themes and beyond. We also welcome
experimental formats, especially photo essays, which address the special
issue’s theme.

Suggested themes

Papers that track, measure and/or theorise the scope of the
socio-environmental impact of the ICT infrastructure.
Papers that track, measure and/or theorise surplus value as both ecological
(land), social (labour) and intellectual (patent) in the context of ICTs.
Understanding the human organisation of nature in commons-based peer
production.
Studies of the environmental dimensions of desktop manufacturing
technologies (for example, 3D printing or CNC machines) in non-industrial
modes of subsistence, e.g. eco-villages or traditional agriculture, as well
as in modern towns and mega-cities.
Suggestions for and insights into bridging understandings of the
socio-economic organisation of the natural commons with the socio-economic
organisation of the digital commons drawing on types of organisations in
the past and the present that are grounded in theories of the commons.
Elaboration of which theoretical approaches can be used for overcoming the
conceptual separation of the categories immaterial/material in the digital
commons.

References

Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The wealth of networks: How social production
transforms markets and freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.

tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique is an academic open access
online journal using a non-commercial Creative Commons license. It is a
journal that focuses on information society studies and studies of media,
digital media, information and communication in society with a special
interest in critical studies in these thematic areas. The journal has a
special interest in disseminating articles that focus on the role of
information in contemporary capitalist societies. For this task, articles
should employ critical theories and/or empirical research inspired by
critical theories and/or philosophy and ethics guided by critical thinking
as well as relate the analysis to power structures and inequalities of
capitalism, especially forms of stratification such as class, racist and
other ideologies and capitalist patriarchy.
Papers should reflect on how the presented findings contribute to the
illumination of conditions that foster or hinder the advancement of a
global sustainable and participatory information society. TripleC was
founded in 2003 and is edited by Christian Fuchs and Marisol Sandoval.

The Media Arts and Technology program (MAT) at UC Santa Barbara presents:

MAT 595M Seminar Series

Next Monday, we have:

Dr. Rosanne Altstatt, New Media Art Historian

Monday, October 20, 2014, 12pm

Engineering Science Building, room 2001

Free to public. coffee will be served.

Art institutions tell stories of art, but what is their voice in
technoculture?s information-filled atmosphere? As the former artistic
director of the Edith Russ Haus for Media Art, Rosanne Altstatt has
listened closely to the media art institution and worked to develop its
voice. In this talk, Altstatt employs metaphors of aurality toward a
notion of the institution as an individual agent or entity in a
technocultural atmosphere that, like sound, surrounds one from all
directions. The art institution is envisioned as a ?silent acousm?tre,? a
voice with no human body that is authoritative in its impression of
omniscience while it simultaneously invites interested publics into its
arena with artists and artworks. The aural personality of the
institution?s architecture and its program produce an ?inter-reactive?
zone in which those who enter, however peripherally, influence the
permeable ?atmosphere? of its social space. As a contemporary art space
with the added complexity of being dedicated to presenting the perspective
of media art and theory, the media art institution is acutely aware of
itself within technoculture?s atmosphere.

BIOGRAPHY

Rosanne Altstatt is an art historian who specialized in new media. She
teaches curating and art history in Purdue?s Honors College and is Dean?s
Fellow in its National and International Scholarships Office. Her
curatorial projects include a broad span of media art, a microradio
station, a compendium of short graphic novels on the subject of cancer,
and an exhibition of vernacular studio photography that is now in
preparation. She was the inaugural Artistic Director of the Edith Russ
Site for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany from 2001 through 2004,
Curator-Director of Videonale in Bonn, Germany from 1994 to 2001, and
Co-curator of the independent exhibition space Schnitt Ausstellungsraum in
2001. Dr. Altstatt wrote the first dissertation on the media art
institution and a monographic survey on video pioneer Steina Vasulka as a
master?s thesis. She has taught curating, art history, and mentored
artists at several institutions including Carl-von-Ossietzky University,
Maine College of Art, University of the Arts ZHdK, and Merzakademie.

Sónar 2014 :: 12.13.14 June 21st Barcelona International Festival of Advanced Music and New Media

Sónar and the Sorigué Foundation announce SonarPLANTA, a venture for the creation of artistic productions in the new media sphere

The project will invite three internationally renowned artists to submit a proposal for a new creation that experiments with creative languages and technology. The selected artist will receive the prize of the production of the piece that will be premiered each year in the new SonarPLANTA space, in Sónar by Day at Sónar Festival.

Sónar 2014 hosts the first SonarPLANTA edition, which features one of the most important explorers of digital aesthetics in art: Carsten Nicolai (born Chemnitz, Germany, 1965), presenting his workunidisplay: a monumental immersive audiovisual installation that explores the logic of self-organizing systems and the limits of perception.

The piece consists of a wall of light and sound of colossal proportions: 6m x 36m, with a side mirrors that give it infinite aspect.

PLANTA is the new headquarters of the Sorigué Foundation and the Sorigué Group, which has just been premiered at the 14th Biennale di Architettura di Venezia. This artistic and business project is surrounded by an industrial landscape and will be the basis of inspiration for the creation of the works presented at SonarPLANTA in Sónar.

What is SonarPLANTA?

SonarPLANTA is the joint initiative by Sónar and the Sorigué Foundation which is being launched this year. It will be held over the next three years and aims to foster and celebrate research and experimentation with creative languages around the technology and New Media art.

Candidate artists invited to participate by SonarPLANTA must submit a work that takes as its starting point PLANTA – the new project by the Sorigué Group and the Sorigué Foundation, located in La Plana del Corb (Balaguer, Lleida), a space where industrial work, technology, art, architecture and nature all coexist.

SonarPLANTA is a key element in the philosophy of Sónar+D. Recognizing the creative maturity of digital languages and aesthetics, the aim of this project is to enable new artistic productions in the field of new media and other forms that are taking shape in the cultural space between new technologies and contemporary art.

Each year, a renowned artist in the field of art and technology will create a new production based on the natural and industrial landscape where PLANTA is located: mountains of cement, olive groves, digging machines, asphalt plants and concrete blocks stacked between natural fields.

The candidature selected each year will be presented in public for the first time at the next 3 editions of Sónar: 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Aims, recipients and artistic areas action

This initiative stems from the wish of Sónar and the Fundació Sorigué to:

– Promote and celebrate research and experimentation in creative languages in the field of technology and digital arts.

– Support and promote the work of the present generation of artists within the field of art and technology.

– Make it possible to produce new projects of great technical and aesthetic value.

– Raise the visibility of artistic creations by exhibiting them at Sónar Festival in Barcelona.

The selected project will be chosen from a restricted call for projects open every year to three international artists acclaimed for excellence in their work and for their unique contribution to the new media creative sphere. The call will include both well-established artists and up-and-coming creators who already have some successful productions under their belt.

Candidates who could apply can be artists, collectives or studios working in the following areas:

– Performance

– Live audiovisual composing

– Sound art

– Kinetic sculpture

– Wireless technologies

– Robotics

– Video mapping

– Augmented reality

– Data visualisation

– Transmedia narratives

– Any other emerging forms in the cultural space between new technologies and contemporary creation

Artists will have to present a work featuring Planta as a starting point. PLANTA is the new project at the very heart of Fundació Sorigué and Grupo Sorigué, located in the business group’s quarry at La Plana del Corb (Lleida/Spain) combining art, science, technology, environment and architecture.

Sónar and its historic relationship with new media art

The investigation of the aesthetic possibilities of digital technologies, experimentation with new formats and languages on the frontier between sound, image and space has been one of the hallmarks of Sónar since it was held for the first time in 1994. The festival was launched in order to create a space for creators working in the territory where technology, cutting-edge contemporary culture and new sensory experiences converge. Since then, Sónar has been one of the key international events for this area of artistic production.

On its 20th anniversary, the festival implemented its commitment to contemporary art and the exploration of postdigital languages further by creating Sónar+D, the large forum for communities of the creative technologies. Sónar+D is a forum for thought and an active agent that promotes creative innovation in various fields, from the emerging industries that bring together culture and technology in unprecedented ways, to the expressive forms which are being shaped by a new generation of digital artists who are no longer emerging, or instead at the forefront of the artistic creation of our age.

The central figure of the first SonarPLANTA is undoubtedly one of the most important explorers of digital aesthetics in art: Carsten Nicolai (born Chemnitz, Germany, 1965). At the forefront of contemporary art, his work dates back over twenty years and blurs the boundaries between sound and visual exploration and technological investigation, and between the laboratory, the stage and the gallery.

unidisplay is the most ambitious project by Carsten Nicolai in the festival’s history: a monumental immersive audiovisual installation that draws an infinite line in which the logic of self-organizing systems and the limits of perception are explored.

This installation – which has been thoroughly checked for its presentation at SonarPLANTA – presents the most basic items in his vocabulary, elevated to a monumental scale: clean lines and basic sonic tones that extend to infinity in a black box that envelops the viewer and plays with the principles of their perception.unidisplay is a project that constructs space and constantly reconstructs the landscape that the work itself creates. The elements it uses are reminiscent of indu
strial technologies – the pixel lines of the interfaces we use every day, the sonorous tones of electronic machinery – which in their work become principles for digital poetics that are all their own.

Sónar was one of the first international events to recognize the importance of the work of Carsten Nicolai, which makes him the perfect artist to launch the SonarPLANTA project. Few artists in the world represent the values of constant experimentation and the ability to transcend disciplines as well as he does. The German artist has been redrawing the boundaries of sound and the digital image for two decades, in both his musical work, with the Alva Noto project, and with the installations that bear his name, which are today present in museums and art centres throughout the world.

PLANTA and the Biennale di Venezia

PLANTA is a project dedicated to the essence of the Sorigué Foundation and the Sorigué Group which organically link the arts to their environment. PLANTA is based in a working industrial complex in Lleida (northeastern Spain), and was conceived as a meeting point for talent and creativity where art, science, technology, social responsibility, the environment and architecture all converge.

The building, for which construction began in the spring of 2014, will be a space dedicated to multidisciplinary artistic production and the new “flagship” of the business group. Sorigué Foundation will establish its art collection and generate synergies between artists and business by means of projects that invite artists from all over the world to produce their work based on the experience of this environment.

The architectural project, created by Kees Kaan and devised in the offices of Kaan Architecten, was recently premiered internationally by the Sorigué Foundation at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia.

Sorigué Foundation

The Sorigué Foundation, established by Julio Sorigué and Josefina Blasco in 1985, works in the cultural, social and educational sphere with the support of the Sorigué Group, a business group that is a leader in the construction sector and industrial services in Spain. Since 1999, the Sorigué Foundation has been working on creating a collection of international contemporary art consisting of more than 450 works from all disciplines, alternating between internationally renowned artists and virtually unknown creators.

The Sorigué Foundation maintains an active policy of loans to Spanish and international institutions, collaborating with leading centres including the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, the MOMA in New York, the Tate Gallery in Liverpool and the Arts Santa Mònica in Barcelona, among many others. Since 1995, it has also maintained a system of scholarships in order to support young talents in the arts, and it participates in various social projects.

What does the act of listening involve and which are its implications? CaixaForum Barcelona organises, in the context of the 21st edition of the Sónar Festival, the meeting “A l’Escolta (Listening).” The aim of this programme of talks, performances and other experiences around listening is to put forward and debate some of the questions raised by what we usually call “sound art.” What is sound art? Is it not, as Max Neuhaus indicated, a rather ambiguous name that, in fact, tells us very little? Does the name not place too much emphasis on sound understood as a simple medium and ignore everything that forms a part of its necessary correlative, i.e. this complex process of understanding reality that is listening? Seth Kim-Cohen, Salomé Voegelin, Edwin Van der Heide, Mattin, Marta García Quiñones, Carme Pardo, José Manuel Costa, Edu Comelles and Lluís Nacenta are the main guests invited to this international meeting, in which the intention is to re-appraise the theoretical and critical approach to an art of sound and listening.

Last Days. Rèquiem per les Glòries, by Edu Comelles Within the symposium “A l’Escolta,” Edu Comelles presents Last Days. Rèquiem per les Glòries (from June 9 to 15 in the CaixaForum entrance hall), a multi-channel sound installation based on the sounds recorded during the days preceding the start of the demolition of the raised roundabout at Barcelona’s plaça de les Glòries. Manipulated and reorganised at random, the rhythms of the vehicles passing over the expansion joints of the raised roundabout, the sustained vibrations of the metal parts of the architectural structure and the background hum of the construction work reappear as the spectral sounds from a vanished space.

Homage to Max Neuhaus (1939–2009) Posed as an exercise in “sound archaeology,” the installation Last Days. Rèquiem per les Glòriesworks as the sonic reverse of the graphic image of the “A l’Escolta” meeting. Inspired by the famous photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge that Max Neuhaus (1939–2009) dedicated in 1976 to Jo Jones, in which large capitals spell out the word “LISTEN,” the image of the poster for the meeting was taken under the raised Glòries roundabout just before demolition started. The graphic image of the symposium, the sound installation by Edu Comelles and the performanceEnlist by Seth Kim-Cohen and Mattin are intended as a homage to Neuhaus, one of the main pioneers in the art of sound and listening, on the 75th anniversary of his birth.

the launch of The Space, a new digital art space funded by the BBC and Arts Council which is being launched in two weeks time. It will be launched with one of the most ambitious digital events ever staged in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern on 13th and 14th June 2014.

We’d like to invite you to a press conference at 9.00am on Friday the 13th June where a panel of experts including Ruth Mackenzie and a number of exciting BIG names in technology will formally announce The Space and all it has to offer.

Hack The Space at Tate Modern will take place continuously over 24 hours, bringing together artists whose medium is technology and hackers whose medium is art. The aim is to inspire exciting new forms of creativity.

The weekend will also include screenings of new commissions, demonstrations of robots, special digital effects and other exclusive events.

The launch of The Space will take place on the eve of London Technology Week from 16-20 June 2014.

Please see below for the official invite with all information.

You are invited to the launch of The Space – a virtual space for artists and audiences to invent and explore new digital art.

Friday 13 June at 9am

The Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1, London
Entrance: Main Entrance in Holland Street, SE1

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS CONFIRMED

(MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED)

Alex Graham, Chair, The Space, founder of the independent start up Wall to Wall, Chairman of the Sheffield Documentary Festival

Ruth Mackenzie, Launch Director, The Space, former Director of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad

Joe Scarboro, Co-Founder, 3Beards

ABOUT

The Space is a new online agency to commission artists from the worlds of creative and digital industries, arts, and culture to create new work and to share free to audiences anywhere in the world.

The Space is set up by a pioneering partnership between the BBC and Arts Council England. And it is working with festivals, galleries, arts centres and others round the UK and internationally.

The Space will launch with an Open Call to invite new voices to pitch their ideas. The most original ideas will be commissioned by The Space.

The Space will be officially launched on the 13 June 2014 with the most ambitious Art Hack ever staged in the celebrated space of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.

Taking place over 24 hours, the brief for attendees is simple:

HACKATHON BRIEF

It’s a pleasure to announce that Loophole for All won the Golden Nica, first prize of Prix Ars Electronica,
one of the most prominent awards from socially engaged media art – in Linz, Austria.http://prix2014.aec.at/prixwinner/12143/

Shortly: The project exposed 215,000 anonymous companies in the Cayman Islands and attempted to sell their identities in order to democratize tax shields.
In one year Loophole4All.com received:
2 Cease and Desist letters from Chinese financial firms.
10 legal threats from business owners in the Cayman Islands.
12 articles in international newspapers.
1,000 orders made through the selling of companies.
700 USD made and lost through selling the identities of Cayman Island firms.
2 PayPal Account suspensions and a ban on trading.
25,000 investigative queries into the database of 215,000 entities.
900 subscriptions to the project’s newsletter with anonymous email addresses or from domains like: ey.com, hsbc.com, citi.com, kcs.com, etc.

Unfortunately, PayPal didn’t concede and I lost all the money that I earned from the selling of subversive artworks in a limited edition. In the meantime, my mailbox on the Cayman Islands appears to have been shut down and I haven’t received mail there in a few months. By the way, I am not making up a single detail of the project. Read the full story here:http://paolocirio.net/press/texts/text_loophole4all.php

There has finally been increased political pressure on the loopholes of anonymous companies, so I decided to move onto the next booming financial instrument that hasn’t yet been regulated, in fact my next project taps into the art market with a promising Smart model that allows everyone to collect art and increase the value of the collections.

Today, I introduce ArtCommodities.com. The platform offers a simple economic analysis of how value is created in contemporary art and proposes an innovative model that allows everyone to invest in art that matters with a new type of collectable object. Read more about the new model:http://ArtCommodities.com/?/c/model

By turning offshore firms in art commodities, you can now buy artworks from Loophole4All.com once again. Become the only owner of unique historical artworks for 99 cents and up!

* Global Directhttp://paolocirio.net/work/global-direct
This project introduces the idea of real-time participation in world wide governance. It’s an ambitious project, which will be ongoing for a few months. It is a 2014 commission by Turbulence through the Jerome Foundation and It’ll be shown at Kasa Gallery in Istanbul in June and at DOX Prague in November.

* Fingerprints Cataloguehttp://DataAsCulture.org
This project is commissioned by Open Data Institute for shows at FutureEverything and Lighthouse in UK. It makes use of sophisticated browser tracking technology for an Anti-Social Sculpture. The fingerprints left on the catalogue and its artworks are collected for composing the display of the featured artworks.

* (W)orld Currencyhttp://paolocirio.net/work/world-currency
A manipulation-proof currency through the creative formulation of an equation and a trading algorithm. It started through a commission at the Museumsquartier in Vienna and was shown in March at Borroworrob at HDLU in Zagreb, in September it’ll be exhibited during the Digital Design Weekend at the V&A Museum in London.

* Face to Facebook
It’s currently being shown in Big Bang Data at CCCB Museum in Barcelona and Out of Control at Ars Electronica Center in Linz. In these installations the audience can browse the epic dating website Lovely-Faces.com! The piece will be shown also at The Photographers’ Gallery in London during this summer.

* HD Stencilshttp://paolocirio.net/work/hd-stencils
It is an experiment with laser cutters and coding. This new technique for High Resolution stencils will be used with spray paint. A few painting will be shown in Berlin in 2015. While this summer you will see those graffiti on downtown’s walls.

V&A Digital Futures is an open platform for the display and discussion of new work by students, researchers, creative practitioners and other professionals working with digital media, interactive art, digital design, science and more. The programme offers opportunities to show and discuss work and ideas with fellow creative practitioners, researchers and the public, but also a platform to network and nurture discussion and future collaborations.

Join us for this special event, showcasing some of the brilliant collaborative projects and prototypes developed during the NASA Space Apps Challenge 2014 (https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/) by teams working in Exeter, London, York and Leicester.

The International Space Apps Challenge is an international mass collaboration focused on space exploration that takes place over 48-hours in cities around the world. The event embraces collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing relevant open-source solutions to address global needs applicable to both life on Earth and life in space. The Space Apps Challenge events in the UK are being led by the Met Office – http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/conference/hackathons/space-apps-challenge

Leaf Patrol – Sanjay Bilakhia, Monti Ricardo, Natasha Trotman, Theo McCaie and Moira Morrison / Space Apps London Leaf Patrol’s response to the challenge focuses on measuring Ground level Ozone quality/pollution, using computer vision, coding and android devices to quantify and classify leaves via three stages: general leaf data collection, quantification and classification. The aim was to raise awareness about the environment among the general population with the hope that the general public would get involved and document the leaves in their areas. This could be scaled up stretching the ‘leaf patrol’ to a national and global level.

This year’s powerhouse combination of ELEKTRA and MUTEK as the EM15 festival has produced an unprecedentedly extensive nighttime program, but also an intensive daytime program. Every year, each festival features a professional section that explores the issues underlying the industry, creativity, and production in the digital arts. This year concentrates both the familiar ELEKTRA International Marketplace for Digital Arts (IMDA) sessions and the MUTEK DIGI_SECTION component(presented by MOOG Audio), as well as the CONNECTING CITIES Symposium at the Phi Centre, over three jam-packed days.

Combining workshops, presentations, meetings and onstage interviews, which provide an outlet for the larger issues facing our community, as well as a forum to explore the latest technologies and speak to the most exciting creators, EM15‘s daytime program which is free and open to everyone, features a rich mixture of events that cater to the experienced professional, the emerging artist, or the curious observer.

From Monday, May 26 to Wednesday, May 28, the international symposiumorganized in collaboration with the Connecting Cities Network (especially its members Public Art Lab Berlin, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology Liverpool,Riga 2014 – European Capital of Culture and the Quartier des spectacles Partnership Montréal) offers exceptional insight into digital creation in public space. A free and public event, the symposium brings together international and Canadian experts from the field of urban media art for a series of keynote presentations and panel discussions that highlight contemporary concepts and outstanding creations while exploring three city visions: The Networked City, The Participatory City, and The Visible City. The members of the Connecting Cities Network and other international experts will also give short and dynamic presentations illustrating urban media manifestations and initiatives from their various cultural contexts, from Berlin to Melbourne, from Sao Paulo to New York City.

The IMDA combines artists and institutions through presentations and meetings, with the aim of creating new connections and outlets for digital works. Over two days (Thursday, May 29 and Friday, May 30), international festival directors, curatorsand Canadian and Québec artists have the chance to show their work to each other in a series of short presentations. The ultimate goal is to increase the international exportation and exposure of digital works from Canada and Québec.

Running from Wednesday, May 28 to Friday, May 30, DIGI_SECTION takes advantage of having some of the most exciting names in audiovisual creation and electronic music in town to host a series of onstage interviews that dig deeper into the practice, philosophies, and careers of select artists. HOLO magazine Editor-in-chief Greg J. Smith will host two conversations with some of the festival’s premier audiovisual artists, one with ALAIN THIBAULT and MATTHEW BIEDERMAN and the second one with PAUL PRUDENCE; The Wire Online Editor Jennifer Allan leads intimate, thoughtful conversations with two of the most compelling artists in contemporary electronic music, HOLLY HERNDON and HEATSICK; and the Ableton Lounge will feature discussions with two trailblazers and innovators in the field of technology and art practice, RICHIE HAWTIN and ROBERT HENKE.

Ourtechnological partners represent the cutting edge of new software, instruments and methods. Roland, whose products are synonymous with the birth of electronic music, preview their new line of AIRA instruments including a performance showcase featuring MATEO MURPHY. Ableton, the inventor of the industry standard real-time performance software Live, also spotlight the latest version of their program and their newest instrument, Push. Derivative, whose TouchDesigner software is at the heart of virtually every innovation in A/V creation and spectacular presentations of 3D mapping, lead a two-day workshop too. WaveDNA and MIXGENIUS show off their latest music creation (Liquid Rhythm) and online mastering software (LANDR), respectively, and Make Noise present their latest modular synthesizer.

Also on offer, the Montréal premiere of the documentary I Dream of Wires, shot partially at MUTEK 2012 and concerned with the history and resurgence of the modular synthesizer and its myriad manifestations in popular and experimental music. Filmed all over the world, the movie features dozens of interviews, and performance footage from artists like TRENT REZNOR, CEVIN KEY, GARY NUMAN, CARL CRAIG and MORTON SUBOTNICK.

For the aspiring artists and music industry types, FACTOR, the Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent On Recordings is offering an overview session of their various funding programs, as well as one-on-one meetings to help kickstart recording and touring careers and explain other opportunities in the music industry.

MUTEK and ELEKTRA would like to thank the following partners, who play a key role in their continued success and for their support of EM15: the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Secrétariat à la région métropolitaine of the ministère du Conseil exécutif du Québec, the ministère du Tourisme du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Festival and Cultural Event Office for the City of Montréal, the department of Canadian Heritage, FACTOR and Canada’s Private Radio Broadcasters, Musicaction, the ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, the ministère des Relations internationales de la Francophonie et du Commerce extérieur du Québec, the Consulat général de Franceà Québec, the Goethe-Institut, LOJIQ, the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Wallonie-Bruxelles International, Délégation Wallonie-Bruxelles and the Culture Programme 2007-2013 of the European Union.

The Trøndelag Centre for Contemporary Art, Norway is presenting the British artist Stanza with his ‘The Emergent City. A Life From Complexity to The City of Bits’.

Thre large scale installation by Stanza including a Mini, Mechanical Metropolis Runs On Real-Time Urban Data captures the changes over time in the environment (city) and represents the changing life and complexity of space as an emergent artwork. The artwork explores new ways of thinking about life, emergence and interaction within public space.The project uses environmental monitoring technologies and security based technologies, to question audiences’ experiences of real time events and create visualizations of life as it unfolds. The installation goes beyond simple single user interaction to monitor and survey in real time the whole city and entirely represent the complexities of the real time city as a shifting morphing complex system.

The data and their interactions – that is, the events occurring in the environment that surrounds and envelops the installation – are translated into the force that brings the electronic city to life by causing movement and change – that is, new events and actions – to occur. In this way the city performs itself in real time through its physical avatar or electronic double: The city performs itself through an-other city.

Cause and effect become apparent in a discreet, intuitive manner, when certain events that occur in the real city cause certain other events to occur in its completely different, but seamlessly incorporated, double. The avatar city is not only controlled by the real city in terms of its function and operation, but also utterly dependent upon it for its existence.

Contemporary art with the ambition of illuminating transformative processes as aesthetic phenomena. Among them is The Emergent City (2012) – an electronic city with hundreds of electronic components that receives and processes information from a network of wireless sensors, that the artist has placed around Trondheim city center.

Stanza uses multiple new technologies to create distances between real time multi point perspectives that emphasis a new visual space. The purpose of this is to communicate feelings and emotions that we encounter daily which impact on our lives and which are outside our control.

The Emergent City is an “Open social sculpture that informs the world and creates new meaningful artistic experiences. The artwork is also a highly technical project that gives vast amounts of information about the environment. By embedding the sensors like this we can re-engage with the fabric of space itself and enable new artistic metaphors within the environment.”

In the exhibition.

The Emergent City. A Life From Complexity to The City of Bits.

The artwork captures the changes over time in the environment (city) and represents the changing life and complexity of space as an emergent artwork.

The Big Bang Data exhibition explores the emergence of the database as a framework for cultural and political thinking and the effects of datafication of the world.

CENTRE DE CULTURA CONTEMPORÀNIA DE BARCELONA
From 9 May until 26 October 2014

FUNDACIÓN TELEFÓNICA
From 25 February until 24 May 2015

BIG BANG DATA explores the phenomenon of the information explosion we are currently experiencing. The last five years have seen the emergence of a generalized awareness among academic and scientific sectors, government agencies, businesses and culture that generating, processing and above all interpreting data is radically transforming our society.

The CCCB has created a space for exhibition projects that bring an integrative approach to the culture of the 21st century and the far-reaching transformations of the digital age.

BIG BANG DATA is the first in this series of proposals to address the areas of friction that these changes are introducing in the fields of science, technological and social innovation, and political, economic and cultural challenges.

For the five months of BIG BANG DATA, the expository space will also be a platform for meeting and debating this highly topical theme, with workshops, hackathons, education programmes and meetups for local and international communities.

ACTIVITIES MANAGEMENT

ZZZINCzzzinc.net
A platform formed by curators, journalists, university lecturers, independent researchers and cultural producers.
This is an experimental laboratory and a resources centre devoted to generating continuous thought on the role of innovation in the sphere of culture. An activity space and meeting point that aims to connect the local community with international professionals and knowledge networks that are temporarily circulating through Barcelona.

spectre@mikrolisten.de>From: Rasa Smite <rasa@rixc.lv>>Subject: FIELDS exhibition – welcome to Riga 2014!>>>Please see below the first ‘official’ >information on the FIELDS – large scale >exhibition that will feature about 40 very >interesting artworks. The event is specially >produced for Riga 2014, European Capital of >Culture – so you all are all very welcome to >Riga this year, and particularly for the FIELDS >opening – on May 15, 2014!>>hope some of you to see in Riga this summer – >the exhibition will be open till August 3, 2014>>kind regards>Rasa>>- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – >- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –>>Welcome to Riga – the European Capital of Culture 2014!>>FIELDS exhibition>Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art>May 15 – August 3, 2014>>Fields – patterns of social, scientific, and technological transformations.>>The changing role of art in society is one where >it does not just create a new aesthetics but >gets involved in patterns of social, scientific, >and technological transformations. Fields, >jointly curated by Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits and >Armin Medosch, presents an inquiry into patterns >of renewal and transition. The curators asked >which expanded fields of artistic practice offer >new ideas for overcoming the crisis of the >present and developing new models of a more >sustainable and imaginative way of life.>>In preparation for the Fields exhibition, a >widespread survey was undertaken, that did not >just look at art in the narrow sense but all >kinds of creative practices that bring together >new thinking, scientific knowledge, aesthetics, >technologies and social practices. A year in >advance, a public call was launched that was met >by over 200 proposals. The curators of Fields >could draw on international networks such as >RIXC’s Renewable Network and the European >collaborations Techno-Ecologies and >Soft-Control. The artist-in-residency series >Fieldwork on measurement ship Eleonore, Linz >2013, aimed at creating ideas and projects for >Fields. Workshops and panels at Transmediale >2013 – Berlin, Pixelache 2013 – Helsinki, and >the Media Art Histories conference Renew – Riga, >October 2013 were used to discuss work and >taxonomies for Fields.>>>From the 200 proposals received through the >>public call, the curators have chosen 40 works >>from all over the world, but with a special >>focus on Central, Eastern and Northern Europe. >>Fields will be exhibited between May 15th and >>August 3rd 2014, at the Arsenals exhibition >>space of Latvian National Arts Museum, the >>largest and most important exhibition space for >>contemporary art in Riga, as a part of Riga – >>European Culture Capital 2014. The exhibition >>will be accompanied by public lectures, >>Renewabl
e Futures conference as well as artist >>performances and concerts. A catalogue will be >>produced, which will consist of a special issue >>of the Acoustic Space peer reviewed academic >>journal, jointly issued by Liepaja’s University >>Art Research Lab and RIXC.>>Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are artists and >founding directors of RIXC, an art institution >in Riga, Latvia, whose Art + Communication >festival has become one of the most important >festivals of this kind in Europe and worldwide. >Armin Medosch is a curator, writer and artist >based in Vienna, Austria. The Fields exhibition >is a follow-up project to Waves 2006, which was >also shown at Arsenals in Riga, co-curated by >Smite, Smits and Medosch.>>The curators selected works that are considered >to be contextual seedbeds for social change. The >changing role of art in society is one where it >does not just create a new aesthetics but gets >involved in patterns of social, scientific, and >technological transformations.>>Fields presents a lively landscape of art that >challenges existing viewpoints and deconstructs >social issues, but also proposes positive >visions for the future. A premise behind this >project was from the very start that no single >field and associated label can do justice any >more to the diversity of contemporary art >practices. Typically, today, the most >interesting practices are transdisciplinary and >transformative – they rely on new combinations >of existing fields-as-in-disciplines, combining >the artistic with the social and the natural, >the scientific and the emotional, the sensible >with the actual.>>Fields opens up the contemporary field for a >free and associative play of radical taxonomies, >remixing and recombining existing categories, >thereby carrying out important boundary work >that gives a new shape to the contact zones >between art, science, technology and social >engagement in the 21st century.>While the final list of artists may still >change, we would like to present some examples >for the radical diversity of approaches:> The relationship with nature plays a >major role in this exhibition, often in >combination with ideas from the open culture >that emerged on the net, about sharing resources >and tackling social issues through participatory >and social mechanisms.> In some cases, such as Leave it in the >Ground by Oliver Ressler (2013), or >Seedsunderground (2013-14) by Shu Lea Cheang, >the work carries a clear and direct political >message, concerning issues such as renewable >energy, sustainability or the fight for the >diversity of agricultural seeds and plants.> Other work, less overtly political, opens >our senses and minds to new ways of seeing the >world, referring to what French philosopher >Jaques Ranci?re calls the ‘distribution of the >sensible’. Lisa Jevbratt shows how different >reality is if we imagine to look at the world >with animal eyes. The Belgian collective Okno >combines rooftop gardening and beehives to >create new maps of the distribution of plant >life in cities. Erich Berger measures changes in >the magnetic field of the Earth. Manu Luksch >offers a free ride on a water taxi in exchange >for a conversation with Kayak Libre.> The human body itself becomes seen as a >node in a complex network of force-fields, where >nature, genetic science and political and >economical topics intersect. The Latvian artist >Gints Gabrans proposes to modify our bodies so >that, with the help of new enzymes, we can eat >grass and tree branches. Hu.M.C.C.- Human >Molecular Colonization Capacity project by Maja >Smrekar, Slovenia, uses an enzyme from the >artist’s body to create a yoghurt. Hans >Scheirl’s paintings and installation Transgenic >(TM) breaks through barriers between 2D and 3D, >simultaneously opening up new ways of artistic >and bodily trans-gression. > The intersection of social and visual >fields is the topic of works by Austrian video >artist Annja Krautgasser’s Prelude (2010) and >media artist Hannah Haslaati, Finland, who uses >principles known from Gestalt psychology to make >group dynamics visible.>The intersection of the globalised economy with >digital technologies, financial markets >exploitative labour practices and culture and >concerns of local communities and indigenous >people are addressed in works such as Histoire >?conomique (2013) by British artist Hayley >Newman, Working Life (2013) by Danish artist >collective Superflex and Eccentric Archive >(2012-14) by Ines Doujak and John Barker.> The relevations by Edward Snowden about >global surveillance activities of the USA >through its PRISM program has made evident how >important the invisible world of data flows and >data bases is. Data fields, battlefields and the >war on terror mark the background for works such >as Endless War (2012-14) by British-Japanese >artist couple YoHa (Graham Harwood and Matsuko >Yokokoji), and We should take nothing for >granted! – on the building of an alert and >knowledgeable citizenry by Slovenian artist >Marko Peljhan and Project Atol. > The relationship between matter and >information, as suggested by cybernetics pioneer >Norbert Wiener, is the topic of the Earth >Computer (2014) Martin Howse and Ghostradio >(2014) by Pamela Neuwirth, Markus Decker and >Franx Xaver.> Artists such as Martins Ratniks’ >installlation with 27 CRT TV screens, and French >artist Cecile Babiole’s sound installation are >engaging with the raw energy of electrical and >electro-magnetic fields, continuing work started >with the Waves project in 2006.> Relationships between electrical and >biological fields inform the work of Latvian >sound artist Voldemars Johansons, who, in >collaboration with RIXC’s own project Biotricity >(bacteria battery) has made music from >electrical signal fluctuations that are >generated by living micro-organisms.>>These are some key topics and examples of up to >40 works that will be shown at Fields.>>http://fields.rixc.lv>>Support: The Fields exhibition is supported by >Riga 2014 and Riga City Council, Latvian State >Cultural Capital Foundation, Latvian Ministry of >Culture, Austrian Ministry of Culture, French >Cultural Institute, Nordic Culture Point.

They survey and sniff, analyze and scrutinize. And of course, they take stunning images in various visible spectra. The 12 science instruments onboard the Cassini spacecraft are seemingly capable of doing it all. Each instrument is designed to carry out sophisticated scientific studies of Saturn, from collecting data in multiple regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, to studying dust particles, to characterizing Saturn’s plasma environment and magnetosphere.

The instruments gather data for 27 diverse science investigations, providing scientists with an enormous amount of information on the most beautiful planet in our Solar System.

Optical Remote SensingMounted on the remote sensing pallet, these instruments study Saturn and its rings and moons in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Fields, Particles and WavesThese instruments study the dust, plasma and magnetic fields around Saturn. While most don’t produce actual “pictures,” the information they collect is critical to scientists’ understanding of this rich environment.

This symposium is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Jean-François Lyotard’s exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1985, entitled Les Immatériaux. The exhibition wanted to demonstrate the emergence of a new materiality produced by the advancement in telecommunications technology. The prefix im- announced a break from the modern conception of material, language, body, science, and art. Les Immatériaux showed how the desire of modernity produced a negation of itself and passed on to a new cultural form which Lyotard named postmodern. The symposium traces the discourses in the exhibition and its intellectual environment of the late 1970s and 80s, and it reflects on the new material conditions brought up by digital technologies in the last 30 years. What kind of sensibility is appropriate for our current material condition?

Organised by the Innovation Incubator and the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, in collaboration with the Leuphana Arts Program. The Innovation Incubator Lüneburg is an EU major project supported by the European Regional Development Fund and the federal state of Lower Saxony.

History of Computer Art

VII. Games

VII.1 Computer and Video Games

The first part of the seventh chapter of “The History of Computer Art” is now online in the English translation. The missing chapter VIII will follow. Chapter VII.1 on Computer- and Video Games: URL: [url]http://iasl.uni-muenchen.de/links/GCA-VII.1e.html[/url]

Japanese leading electronic musician/artist Ryoji Ikeda unveils his new installation supersymmetry at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), a co-production with Le lieu unique, scène nationale de Nantes in France.

Having produced and exhibited an audio-visual work titled C4I at YCAM shortly after the Center’s opening in 2004, Ikeda had his first major solo show, datamatics, at YCAM in 2008. From one exhibition to the next, his work evolved in terms of scale and degree of precision, solidifying his worldwide reputation.

This installation is the first in six years after Ikeda’s second residency at YCAM, a newly conceived work based on the artist’s own performance piece superposition, which premiered in 2012. In his ambitious new work, Ikeda attempts to interpret quantum mechanics and quantum information theory from an aesthetic point of view, and challenge the boundaries of his trademark artistic style based on data observation.

Visitors to supersymmetry will be overwhelmed by sophisticated sound and visuals unfolding on a large scale, and gain deep insight into the scheme of things and the world at large. Vividly conveying Ikeda’s recent interest and commitment to quantum theory, the exhibition is made up of two works that reflect ideas inspired by Ikeda’s dialogues with researchers and engineers during his stay at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s largest particle physics research institute in Geneva, Switzerland, since February. The exhibition pairs the two installationssupersymmetry [experiment] and supersymmetry [experience], corresponding to the relationships between experimentation and observation in modern (particle) physics, and between representation and mathematical models.

As suggested by the appendix experiment in the former, in this work visitors can witness physical phenomena prior to being observed and recorded as data. Installed in the studio are three light boxes that emit intense white light. The surfaces of these light boxes are paved with microscopic spherical objects that behave in various ways according to the boxes’ slightly changing inclination. In contrast,supersymmetry [experience] features two 20-by-0.7-meter horizontal video screens arranged parallel to each other on the left and right side, along with two parallel rows of 20 monitors each, set up in the darkness of the exhibition space.

While images are successively displayed on the video screens, their respective movements are analyzed and described on the monitors lined up in front of them. The work dismantles the visitor’s consciousness as he/she attempts to grasp at once all the things that happen simultaneously in the multiple moving and blinking images and their respective complex, high-speed analyses on both sides of the installation. Audio and visual contents of both experiment and experience will be frequently updated in the future, to continually reflect Ikeda’s new scientific and mathematical interests.

Ryoji Ikeda
Born in 1966 in Gifu, Japan. Lives and works in Paris. Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.

The 12th Linux Audio Conference (LAC) is scheduled to take place at the ZKM | Karlsruhe in spring 2014. The Conference brings together software developers, artists, musicians, composers and users who work with Linux and Open Source software.

Over four day period, discussions will be held in connection with a series of lectures, presentations and workshops on developments in the field of music production in Linux. Electro-acoustic works composed with Open Source software will be performed in several concerts. As part of “Playrooms” and “Soundnight” there will also be several live performances produced with the use of Open Source software, ranging from improvisation and club-compatible sounds.

The Conference was brought into being at the ZKM in collaboration with developers in the Linux audio community between 2003 and 2006. Since then, it has been pursued by renowned institutions within Europe and the USA, and is now, once again, about to ‘return home’ in 2014.

The new dedicated program of the ISEA2014 conference, My Location, My Sense of Belonging, recognizes the importance of public space and the interrelationship of art, technology, design and the city. This program aims to discuss the role and influence of creative disciplines and technology on public interactions and the possibilities for enhancing urban spaces. Creative works in public space can help to create identity and a sense of belonging. Originating from a pearling and trading industry, the UAE has always been exposed and open to foreign cultures. In recent years, the country has been witness to rapid urbanization and has attracted a global multi-cultural society, factors that all impact the city on a daily basis. In this evolving reality, the role of culture in public space and of multicultural society on the notion of public space is an important aspect of sustainable city development.This program will host a series of short paper presentations, poster presentation, workshops (2-3hrs) and public programming along with external events such as a public round table discussion on Public Space and Public Art.SUBMISSION TO THIS SPECIAL PROGRAM CAN BE MADE IN THE FOLLOWING CATEGORIES:1. SHORT PAPER SUBMISSION (2500-4000 WORDS)These sessions are best suited for a short summary of scholarly work and reports on current or completed research. Authors present summaries or overviews of their work, describing the essential features (related to purpose, procedures, outcomes, or product). Presenters are welcome, and highly encouraged, to include any visual support to assist delivery of their oral presentation. Individual abstracts will be accepted. Papers should be 2500-4000 words long (excluding the abstract, front matter and references) and should adhere to the conference paper submission guidelines (which can be found at www.isea2014.org). Submissions must be in English language. Submissions are due on May 30, 2014 and must include:• Presenter’s names and affiliations (contact details, organization, university)• Abstract (maximum of 300 words) and a bibliography2. POSTER PRESENTATIONThe Poster Presentation Session will showcase a variety of in-progress research and completed or planned creative projects. Authors will stand next to their posters during the poster presentation sessions and facilitate interactions with conference attendees. Poster submissions guidelines will be provided after acceptance of a poster presentation abstract of 300 words. Deadline for abstract submission: May 30,2014.3. WORKSHOP PROPOSALS (2-3 HRS)Proposals for 2-3 hour workshops exploring the concepts of and solutions for public spaces need to present a description of the research issues that the workshop will address, including their context and practical application. The workshop proposal must contain a description of the workshop structure, planned participant’s involvement and anticipated contributions to the special program topic. The 2-3 page long workshop proposal shall follow a workshop submission guideline (to be found at www.isea2014.org). Deadline for workshop submission: July 1st, 2014.Deadlines:Submission of abstracts for papers and posters: May 30Submission of workshops: July 1Announcement of Acceptance: July 31October 1st final draft of paper submission and presentation fileOct. 30-Nov 8 ISEA2014 SymposiumFinal submission of camera ready/publishable paper Dec. 1.Paper proceedings to be published in early 2015http://www.isea2014.org/

Visit the ISEA2014 website for any additions to program submission or subthemes.http://www.isea2014.org/en/Submissions/call_Public_Space.aspx FOR QUESTIONS PLEASE CONTACT ISEA2014 COMMITTEE: isea2014@zu.ac.ae

If you visited Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1990s, you might’ve encountered a group of intense young people who looked like they stepped out of a sci-fi novel. Sporting fanny packs overflowing with cables and electronic equipment, and bulky headgear, these MIT students self-identified as cyborgs. A few members of the team kept their systems on at all times—in classes, meetings, and parties; out on dates and trips to the beach. (Thad Starner, who is now one of the technical leads on the Google Glass project, has worn his “wearable computer” continuously since 1993.)

Their primary aim was, in a phrase coined by the sci-fi author Verner Vinge, “intelligence amplification”.(1) They envisioned a benign human-machine synergy that would make people smarter, faster, and more efficient. The physical systems they wore consisted of a head-mounted display—a small transparent computer screen through which you could see both the real world and computer-generated graphics—connected to a computer and a one-handed keyboard.(2) At the heart of these systems though was code—the software that enabled wearers to interact with their devices and to store, organize, and retrieve data.

With this outfit they were able to take notes, look up information, send messages, and snap photos instantaneously, wherever they were. In the 1990s, before the widespread use of smart phones, such powers were unheard of. These prescient researchers foresaw and embraced an extreme version of the always-on, totally-connected life.

The cyborg is a popular imagining of the relationship between code and the body, of how people can and should relate to computers. Alluring and unsettling, this vision promises that we can be better than human: smarter, stronger, faster; but it leaves us suspicious that we will lose ourselves in the process—as parts of our bodies are gradually “augmented” or simply replaced by machines and software. I grew up on a farm, the child of back-to-the-earth hippies, steeped in a culture with a deeply rooted distrust of technology and the very notion of human progress. My relationship with technology continues to be an ambivalent one—equal parts enchantment, skepticism, and trepidation.

I was drawn to computers not for their abilities to augment or replace human intelligence, but for their expressive potential. A decade after the MIT cyborgs first emerged, when I began to research wearable computing, my interest stemmed from a fascination with fashion. I joined a small group of designers and engineers who were investigating how computers might expand the pallet we use to adorn and identify ourselves.

Nervous System’s designs look like they’ve been harvested from an ocean or meadow, not made with machines. A lacy filigreed earring looks like a veiny leaf skeleton; a twisting spiral necklace, like a piece of coral. Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, the founders of the company, develop software that mimics biological processes. Their programs generate designs for objects that are, in turn, fabricated by 3D printers, laser cutters, or other automated tools.

The algorithms Jesse and Jessica write define not so much individual objects as entire families of forms. A program produces a basic structure. Each time it is run with new input parameters, it generates a new variation on the structure. Variations can also be created in a collaborative process between the software and the person who will ultimately wear the design. Code determines the framework for a piece, but a prospective wearer can fine-tune and play with contours until she finds a version she fancies.

A piece might begin with a 3D scan of her body. This scan provides a precise canvas on which to work—a perfect virtual representation of her figure. The software then digitally “grows” a pattern around this shape. Once the basic pattern is set, she can lower a hemline, loosen a sleeve, or create a more finely detailed decoration on a bodice. Despite these adjustments, the piece remains true to the aesthetic framework laid out by the program. Once the design is just the way the wearer wants, it’s 3D printed. No one else will ever have one like it. The product of this digital collaboration is utterly unique.

Software gives us new tools—interactivity, dynamics, and seemingly limitless complexity—that we can use to make beautiful and entirely original things. Code can help us communicate and explore our identities in compelling and delightful new ways.

In a famous paper in 1950, Alan Turing, the father of computing, posed the question, “can machines think?”.(3) Turing, like many scientists and mathematicians, assumed that there was no fundamental difference between the capabilities of a computer and that of a human brain. He supposed that it would only be a matter of time before a robot was developed that would be indistinguishable from a human.

Turing’s paper, Computing machinery and intelligence, described a simple test—the Turing Test—to determine whether or not a machine was sentient. The idea was straightforward: if a machine was good enough to fool a person into believing it was human, we could fairly assume it was indeed thinking—carrying out the same kind of process that occurs in our brains when we think.

Computer scientists were by no means the first to
dream of building human replicas. There is a long history of this kind of play and exploration. To take just one instance, the great automaton builder Jacques de Vaucanson constructed a collection of dazzling life-like forms in the 18th century. One of them, the Flute Player, was a full-sized android that could play twelve different songs on a flute by blowing air out of its mouth. Nine bellows powered the machine, which included a mechanism to mimic each facial muscle used in human playing.(4) As astonishing as it was, the Flute Player was limited; it couldn’t walk, talk, or smile.

Though robotics has progressed since then, it’s not clear that anyone is much closer to making a synthetic human being. However, contemporary researchers have discovered something useful: people are actually quick to ascribe personhood to machines. A robot need not be a perfect or even a close copy to pass Turing’s test. Humans, it turns out, are hardwired to look for life. We see faces in clouds, empathize with stick-figure cartoons, and relate to robots like they’re people even if they’re poor imitations.

Robots are servants. They do what we want them to do, what they’re programmed to do, often distasteful jobs we’d rather not do ourselves. They sweep our floors and fight our wars. Increasingly, they’re taking care of us. The Japanese government recently allocated approximately $24 million to develop robots for elder care, hoping that machines will be able to nurse the country’s aging population.(5) In the USA and Asia, “nanny robots” are being proposed as a solution to the lack of affordable childcare.(6) Roxxxy, the “sex robot girlfriend,” is a full service partner.(7)

If the researchers have it right, we’re likely to fall for, even to love, these synthetic companions. Will they love us back? Is a relationship with a machine that is programmed to please, to fulfill our every wish, a desirable substitute for the complex rewarding struggle that is a relationship with a person? Are we headed for a future in which we’re increasingly living “alone together” in professor Sherry Turkle’s phrase—next to one another, yet each of us isolated in our own personal, machine-mediated bubble?(8)

Codes and machines are claiming more and more of our time, our attention, and our physical selves. With each year, we spend more time interacting with computers and less time interacting with people and the natural environment. And yet, software is revealing vast new spaces of knowledge, expression, and experience—introducing us to entirely new ways of thinking about and interacting with the world.

Coding the Body interrogates the relationships between humans and code. It turns to cyborgs, robots, fashion designers, geneticists, artists, and others to explore how code is being used to understand, control, decorate, and replicate us. The exhibition celebrates the beauty of code and its manifestations while casting a wary eye on its ever-expanding power.

Leah Buechley is a designer, engineer, artist, and educator whose work explores intersections and juxtapositions—of “high” and “low” technologies, new and ancient materials, and masculine and feminine making traditions. She also develops tools that help people build their own technologies, among them the LilyPad Arduino kit. She recently left her position as an Associate Professor at the MIT Media Lab to start a design firm. While at MIT she founded and directed the High-Low Tech research group. Her work has been exhibited internationally in venues including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ars Electronica Festival, and the Exploratorium, and has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Boston Globe, Popular Science, andWired. Leah received a PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a BA in physics from Skidmore College. At both institutions she also studied dance, theater, fine art, and design.

Bringing together international experts from the field of urban media art, the symposium combines keynote presentations, workshops and panel discussions that explore three city visions: The Networked City, The Participatory City, and The Visible City. Furthermore, together with Montréal’s Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles, we discuss Montréal’s need for an urban digital laboratory in the context of the city’s recent efforts to gain Smart City status. Finally, the members of the Connecting Cities Network present manifestations of urban digital creativity from their various cultural contexts, from Berlin to Melbourne, from Sao Paulo to New York City.

The Montréal programme will also contain the 2014 CCN curators’ workshop.As a follow-up, we strongly encourage you to plan a stay in Montréal from 25 May to 1 June to participate in the MUTEK festival and many other events of Montréal’s first Printemps numérique!

In the framework of the European project Connecting Cities: Participatory City 2014,iMAL (Brussels) organises an Urban Media Lab masterclass. A range of events from Symposium, to masterclass, a 6 days workshop led by the artist Luciano Pinna and by the Connecting Cities’ artist Ali Momeni & urban interventions will be held from mid-May to mid-June.

Look here at our partner iMAL Brussels for more information about the program and the open call for projects open until May 11.

CC Event #1 @ São Paulo

Play! 20147 – 30 April 2014, São Paulo, Brazil

The second version of Play! at the Galeria de Arte Digital do SESI Media Facade is soon going to end. Here some impressions of our CC Event #1 with the Participatory City project the Street Crosser from Noobware & Nutune.

CC Event #2 @ Riga

Blank Canvas Street Art Festival13 – 17 May 2014, Riga, Latvia

CC Workshop Suse Miessner14 May 2014, Riga, Latvia

From May 13 – 17, 2014 the Blank Canvas street art festival is going to place in Riga and gather both local and foreign street artists to work on a range of walls in Riga, as well as highlight and explain the meaning of street art for a wider public. In the framework of Blank Canvas the Participatory City artist Suse Miessner will show her project Urban Alphabet and conduct a workshop on the 14 May to explore the city discover, document and map the diversity of type, tags and lettering.

Congratulations!

This year’s ‘Art of Engineering’ award goes to…the Constitute for their Networked City project ‘Ready to Cloud’, which was curated and produced by Public Art Lab!

FERCHAU awarded projects between art and technology, with special focus on the topic ‘liquid Space’. Congratulations to the Berlin-based collective, who received the first prize for ‘Ready to Cloud’ and made the third rank with their EYEsect/an Out-of-Body-Apparatus.

C … what it takes to change @ Linz

This year’s Ars Electronica Festival theme is “C … what it takes to change”. The festival set for September 4-8 is an inquiry into the prerequisites and framework conditions necessary to enable social innovation and renewal to emerge and make an impact. The focus will be on art as catalyst.From September 4th to 8th, Ars Electronica will once again be a setting for reciprocal exchange and networking, a one-of-a-kind forum in which perspectives and opinions are negotiated and presented in the form of speeches, artistic installations, performances and interventions. It will be taking place at multiple locations throughout the city, in established artistic venues and public spaces alike.

Programa La Plaza Open Call

Deadline: 30 April 2014

Your project on the media façade of the Medialab-Prado in Madrid?Sure! You have a few more days to submit your project. Join the Programa la Plaza project by Sergio Galan and Victor Díaz and freely program a sequence for the 15 meters-wide Medialab-Prado screen.

Connecting Cities is a European and worldwide expanding network aiming to build up a connected infrastructure of media facades, urban screens, projection sites and mobile units to circulate artistic and social content. More information on www.connectingcities.net

Sternberg Press is pleased to announce the publication of Subtraction by Keller Easterling, the fourth book in the Critical Spatial Practice series edited by Nikolaus Hirsch and Markus Miessen. Keller Easterling will be in conversation with architect and professor Nikolaus Hirsch and e-flux journaleditor Brian Kuan Wood for the book’s New York launch at e-flux. For the launch in Berlin, Easterling and Hirsch will join Juan A. Gaitán, curator of the 8th Berlin Biennale for a conversation at the Crash Pad c/o KW Institute of Art.

Unbuilding is the other half of building. Buildings, treated as currency, rapidly inflate and deflate in volatile financial markets. Cities expand and shrink; whether through the violence of planning utopias or war, they are also targets of urbicide. Repeatable spatial products quickly make new construction obsolete; the powerful bulldoze the disenfranchised; buildings can radiate negative real estate values and cause their surroundings to topple to the ground. Demolition has even become a spectacular entertainment.

Keller Easterling’s volume in the Critical Spatial Practice series analyzes the urgency of building subtraction. Often treated as failure or loss, subtraction—when accepted as part of an exchange—can be growth. All over the world, sprawl and overdevelopment have attracted distended or failed markets and exhausted special landscapes. However, in failure, buildings can create their own alternative markets of durable spatial variables that can be managed and traded by citizens and cities rather than the global financial industry.

These ebbs and flows—the appearance and disappearance of building—can be designed. Architects—trained to make the building machine lurch forward—may know something about how to put it into reverse.

Nikolaus Hirsch is a Frankfurt-based architect and curator. Recently, he was the Director of Städelschule and Portikus and curated “Cultural Agencies” (Istanbul, 2008), “I knOw yoU” (Dublin, 2013), and “Folly” for the Gwangju Biennale (2013). Current projects include “Real DMZ” (Korea, 2014) and “The Land Workshop” (Thailand, 2014–15).

Juan A. Gaitán is curator of the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art.

He studied the remote viewing accuracy of remote viewer Ingo Swann, as measured by a group of ratings of congruence (between Swann’s drawings and the locale being “viewed”) by 40 experimentally blind participants[43] during stimulation with complex magnetic fields using a circumcerebral (around the head) eight-channel system.

Ronson, Jon, The Men who Stare at Goats, Picador, 2004, ISBN 0-330-37547-4, written to accompany the TV series The Crazy Rulers of the World[3] The military budget cuts after Vietnam and how it all began.

Buchanan, Lyn, The Seventh Sense: The Secrets Of Remote Viewing As Told By A “Psychic Spy” For The U.S. Military,ISBN 0-7434-6268-8

Remote viewing was popularized in the 1990s upon the declassification of certain documents related to the Stargate Project, a $20 million research program that had started in 1975 and was sponsored by the U.S. government, in an attempt to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena. The program was terminated in 1995 after it failed to produce any useful intelligence information.[n 1][5]

Whilst many artefacts today are produced, distributed and consumed solely in digital form, this situation is not completely new. Artefacts from previous eras have also been ‘born’ digital. The advent of micro- or home computers in the mid-1970s and 80s, for instance, saw a range of digital artefacts produced, amongst them digital games, demos, and other early software. These objects are complex and interesting as are the preservation challenges they pose. To issues of hardware and software deterioration are added characteristics such as real-time responsiveness, highly-invested fan communities, and the earliness with which decisions about significance and preservation strategies must be arrived at. Games preservation is emerging as an experimental domain where some of the thorniest issues in born digital cultural heritage are confronted. No longer a niche endeavour limited to those who played titles ‘back in the day’, developments in games preservation and related fields are of relevance to many different cultural forms, their scholars and custodians. Playability also creates interest in and enlivens the preservation message, making it easier for non-specialists to grasp.

We invite proposals for papers, panels, and workshops for an international conference on The Born Digital and Cultural Heritage, to be held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne, 19-20 June, 2014. Recognising that born digital artefacts often require multiple sets of expertise, we are keen to receive proposals from researchers and practitioners in the range of disciplines, spheres of practice and institutional contexts concerned with born digital heritage. This includes libraries, archives, museums, galleries, moving image institutions, software repositories, universities, and more besides. Proposals might be theoretical, practical, policy, or otherwise oriented. Case studies of innovative practices, papers based on research with born digital artefacts, and new institutional approaches are equally welcome.

Abstracts

Platform studies is a recent and prominent scholarly methodology for ‘born digital’ histories. The platform studies book series was introduced in 2009 with Racing the beam (Montfort & Bogost, 2009). The project was left deliberately open, but the book is the series retained a few common features: 1) a focus on a single platform; 2) a detailed investigation of the technologies; 3) a concern with how platforms are embedded in culture and society, and the reciprocal relations between platforms and culture/society.

Through a critical engagement with platform studies from the perspective of media archaeology this paper will argue that the method implicitly establishes an archive relevant to a particular platform from the available materials. This may include a collection of software, developer interviews, contemporary magazine and news articles, and even other paratexts. How this particular archive is produced varies from project to project, but the process of producing the archive shapes the perception of the platform immensely. This archive established through platform studies acts as a methodological heuristic that produces a historic and physical entity—the platform—that can be examined and mapped as a stable node within an otherwise unruly network of material and social/cultural relations.

In this paper we argue that by examining how the platform studies archive is produced highlights the role that the preservation of games and software has in shaping scholarly understanding of platforms and their historic context. Furthermore, platform studies archives strongly indicate that how ‘born digital’ texts are understood is contextualized through other contemporary non-digital texts, like magazines and box and cabinet art.

Public space is a hole everybody strove to close,but it could not be plugged; that is why it was called public.The money that permeates this hole is like a sieve.It preserves nothing and and retains nothing, so far as we can remember.

Master of Arts in Spatial StrategiesWeissensee School of Art, Berlin

The Master of Arts course in Space Strategies is founded on a conception of praxis in urban space that draws on architectural and artistic practices, focusing on the discipline of art in public space. In the context of post-war modernity, art in public space has played a crucial role in the discussion of the social relevance of art. However, it has become necessary to reconsider the concept of space and the concept of publicness.

Space Strategies parses the concept of space in terms of virtual, global and urban spaces, confronting public space, and artistic production within it, with the actuality of these three spaces. With global developments of the past two decades having completely undermined what is regarded the shared conception of publicness (Öffentlichkeit), the Master course seeks to redefine the challenges and political responsibilities of the individual within contemporary contexts. Space Strategies aims to understand artistic work as an insistence on publicness as a sphere where democratic participation constitutes social spaces, living spaces, and the allocation of essential resources.

Applicants are sought from all disciplines of fine arts and humanities, as well as graduates and professionals from the fields of architecture, urbanism, and cultural and social sciences. The Master course offers further qualifications in the cutting edge between artistic praxis and discourse, from art theory and art criticism to political theory and art history, critical urban research, migration studies, and automata theory. Catchphrases such as artistic research, interdisciplinary, intervention and artistic curating are critically scrutinized. In the same way, the structure of the course itself is interrogated as a product of the Bologna Process of European education reforms. This process is part of a trend that is rendering knowledge subordinate to efficiency, reducing it to an artefact that is expedient to the market one day, only to be rationalised away the next. Since the economisation of knowledge goes hand in hand with the economisation of urban space, it is of particular importance to tease out these parallels in relation to the urban, the virtual, the global and ourselves.

Spatial Strategies above all aims to develop an independent artistic or art-related praxis that above all draws on a sense of autonomy and a political sensibility.

The Master of Arts degree is awarded upon successful completion of the program.

The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) and the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST) present Public Space? Lost & Found, a two-day symposium and accompanying exhibition to celebrate the living legacy of artist and educator Antoni Muntadas and collectively redefine ideas of public space and its multiple functions. Convening scholars, artists, architects, and planners from MIT and beyond, the symposium will engage contemporary critical discourses and practices on public space.

The symposium and exhibition investigate the definitions of public space across disciplines, and the tools, tactics, and consequences of reclaiming—or to use a term coined by Muntadas, creating interventions in—public space through art and architecture. Public Art, that is art in public space, is a concept that has been in discussion and revision throughout the evolution of the terms “art” and “city” themselves. Recent movements—including those in Egypt, Madrid, New York, and around the world in Occupy communities—have exposed the distance between “public” and “space” and reflect citizens’ interests in recovering and re-appropriating the city or town square. The themes of the symposium draw from Muntadas’s career at MIT and his artistic practice, a legacy that directly affects the work and philosophies of many of the invited speakers.

Click here to reserve a seat and learn more about the symposium and exhibition.

Friday, April 18Opening remarks by Adèle Santos (Dean of the School of Architecture + Planning, MIT)2pm

Closing remarks by Nader Tehrani (Head of the Department of Architecture, MIT)7pm

This program is made possible by funding provided by the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST); the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, Office of the Dean (SA+P); MIT Department of Architecture; the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT); the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT); MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS); Center for Civic Media; and the Media Lab.

he “Disruptive Impulses” project is a presentation of the current activities of three artists – Ryan Jordan (UK), Gerard Lebik (PL) and Maciej Ożóg (PL), whose performances in diverse ways address the problem of utilisation of all available audio sources in a critical way.

$B!H(BThe pick was [then] used to hammer on the surface, and by this means,the Angle Ditch was discovered. The sound produced by hammering on anexcavated part is much deeper than on an undisturbed surface, acircumstance worth knowing when exploring a grass-grown downland,though not applicable to cultivated ground.$B!I(B $(Q#|(B [Augustus PittRivers. Excavations in Cranborne Chase. Volume IV. 1895]

This two day workshop, guided by Martin Howse, will equip participantswith a range of practical techniques for audible, forensic examinationof both the material and immaterial.

A series of experimental situations will be constructed, investigatingmaterials through audible excitation, transformation and detectionincluding ultrasound, light modulation, surface playback, andelectrochemistry. The workshop will also examine classical techniquesfor the study of electronic voice phenomena (EVP), and suggest newdetection strategies.

remote perception Remote perception indicates that man is capable of maintaining contact with the outside world relying on dowsing and his own paranormal abilities . In this case dowsing should be recognized as an all-purpose method of cognition in natural science and acquisition of information from the environment

This one day event (10am – 4:30pm; registration from 9:30am) will be of interest to people involved in:

Arts and humanities research

Community work

Social activism

Game design and development

Play and game cultures

New media journalism

The event is free and refreshments and a buffet lunch will be provided at no extra cost. The Business School is fully accessible and includes hearing loop facilities. If you have any additional needs please contact us in advance.

The Business School is well served by public transport with Oxford Road Train Station a 10 minute walk from the venue. There is ample off-road parking nearby.

Further information about the day will be emailed to participants prior to the event. If you have specific questions or enquiries about the day please contact Scott Gaule (s.gaule@mmu.ac.uk)

Event overview

The day will comprise of workshops and presentations from leading exponents of socially aware game design and play cultures. It will also provide an opportunity for participants to play examples of these games, and practice how to make them.

Joost will discuss his ideas on this contemporary moment being marked by a renaissance in play and the ludification of culture. He will describe something about the changing landscapes of play and games in contemporary society and introduce the concept of playability, and its usefulness in understanding social change processes.

Matt will introduce recent Blast Theory projects online and on the streets. Works such as Ivy4Evr (a text messaging drama for Channel 4) and I’d Hide You (a mixed reality game for The Space commissioned by the BBC and Arts Council England) place conversations at the centre of the experience. Participants chat with scripted bots, performers and each other. In multiplayer, multiplatform environments is this a model for games that move beyond physics?

Join designer Mary Flanagan in a dynamic, quick paced set of modding exercises where participants will alter familiar physical game mechanics in order to intentionally highlight particular human values. Become practiced at quickly changing designs and thinking about values.

The Diego de la Vega co-op is a case study that uses transmedia storytelling as a tool to intervene the thing we call reality. Books, currency, futures, labour, shares, solidarity agriculture and sports are some of the investment tools that sustain the Variable Network State nano-macro-economy and its social and political activities.

This is an active play session where we explore how to make digitally enabled folk games, where bodily interactions are obscured and changed by technology. We will look at differences between digital and analogue games and what we can learn from both. We will explore what enhanced play we can achieve in the hybrid space between the digital and analogue play. More specifically, we will play the classical folk game Lemon Joust and our digital counterpart. After this we will play a game on our new Human Reconfigured setup and brainstorm on variations of the game.

Over lunch participants are invited to play games. The social change arcade machine will be present, loaded up with games with “Something to say”.

Our friends from the Manchester pervasive game collective ‘The Larks’, will also be recruiting participants over the lunch break to play-test their new game about social mobility and class, called ‘Know your Place’.

A friend of mine showed me how to use Google Maps. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It lets you use satellite images to look at locations all over the world. A few years ago, I was in a car accident.

Besides unnecessarily explaining Google Maps, “Satellite Images” begins by executing exposition with brutality and an utter disregard for the show-don’t-tell “rule.” But this is creepypasta, an authorless horror story from the bowels of the internet. A kind of new iteration of the urban legend, with the internet as its city, creepypasta generally takes the form of as FOAFlore (ie friend-of-a-friend lore), comments on a forum, or a final, strangled pleading blogpost, posing as authentic testimony rather than fiction. The genre thrives on anonymity and slipshod writing, both of which boost the stories’ presumed veracity. Will Wiles describes the genre as having “an eerie air of having arisen from nowhere… a networked effort to deliver dread in as efficient a way as possible.”

Giving Contours To Shadows.February – November 2014Exhibition: May 24 – July 27, 2014

The art and research project Giving Contours to Shadowstakes its cue from the Glissantian concept that history, a “functional fantasy of the West“, cannot be left in the hands of historians only. In that sense, the project looks at ways, by which artists, curators and thinkers relate to their epoch, to times past and to the drawing of prospective trajectories, thus weaving alternatives to established narratives – from embodiment practices to possibilities of pre-writing of History. Unfolding into a group exhibition at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and SAVVY Contemporary and a performance program at Maxim Gorki Theatre and Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, as well as a roundtable series in Nairobi and Berlin, a series of satellite projects in Marrakech, Dakar, Lagos and Johannesburg, Giving Contours to Shadows reflects on philosophical, socio-cultural and historical aspects of global interest. With a particular interest in creating space for different epistemologies, the project will cast light on discourses that transcend Western perceptions of history, and propose contemporary narratives that brave the colonial and post-colonial discourses.

Recounting the past and history’s trace to the present through works that stand as a voice of the unspoken or the unuttered, the exhibition and satellites are framed in four thematic sections: Performing and Embodying History,Wandering through History, Sequestrating History and Pre-Writing History. Furthermore, the roundtable program is dedicated to discussions on the ideologies of space, performativity and the archive, the imaginary of the present, and notions of pre-writing history.

Satellite #1 – Marrakech, MoroccoOn February 28, 2014 Giving Contours to Shadowsembarked with its first satellite project – a collaboration with the exhibition project If You’re So Smart, Why Ain’t You Rich? On The Economics Of Knowledge (curators: Bonaventure Ndikung and Pauline Doutreluingne) in the framework of the 5th Marrakech Biennale. Both projects interweave especially through the intervention of Emeka Ogboh, whose work Oshodi Stock Exchange links thesatellite projects in Marrakech and Lagos.

Roundtable #1, Satellite #2 – Nairobi, KenyaLivestream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/gcts-roundtables-nairobiOrganized in collaboration with Jimmy Ogonga and the Centre for Contemporary Art of East Africa, and hosted by The NEST, the first Giving Contours to Shadows roundtable platform will take place in Nairobi on March 12 and 13, 2014. With the titles Beyond Amnesia: Alternative Narrations and The Written, The Spoken: Legends, Myths, Fictions & Histories, the two-day sessions will engage Kenyan artists and thinkers with an invitation to explore the limits of the hegemonic and teleological relationship between concepts of the historic, and the future. Paulo Nazareth will do a performance in the framework of Satellite #2.

How does the NSA spying scandal affect us as artists? What is the roleof art and artists after the revelations of Edward Snowden? The digitalhas moved from the margins and has become central to every day life. Canart be a means to critically reflect on the possibilities and theimplications of the digital? Have new technologies become a meansexclusively to service power and surveillance? Or can they be made toservice protest and resistance?

Together with artists Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev andWikiLeaks-founder Julian Assange, we will explore questions around art,free internet and surveillance.

In the afternoon, Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, authors of the?Critical Engineering Manifesto?, will give participants of theirNETworkshop insights into the technical and political dimensions of theInternet. Their workshop deals with questions of how technology shapescommunication, how networks are built and how they are manipulated.

We are very happy to announce our book ?Delivery for Mr. Assange. EinPaket f?r Mr. Assange?.

The book recounts the many stories that occurred around ?Delivery forMr. Assange? and ?Delivery for Mr. Rajab?. It follows the Deliveriesfrom our perspective, describing the extraordinary deliveries, all thecraziness and the uproar it caused on the internet in a fast-paced gonzonarrative.

Together with musician Bit-Tuner, author and Bitnik member Daniel Ryserwill launch the newly published book.

You can buy your copy on Saturday at the Helmhaus or order it from yourfavourite local bookshop or online:

In a conversation between !Mediengruppe Bitnik and Julian Assange at theEcuadorian embassy in London via video-link we will focus on art undermass surveillance. We will talk with Julian about his perspective on thedeliveries, his take on mass surveillance and where to go from here.There will be time for some questions from participants at the end ofthe conversation.

Computer Security Workshop

Basic Crypto for Everybody The internet is currently a bit broken. Our reading habits, conversations, social graph, and location are constantly logged and stored for big data analysis. This workshop is about opting-out of this social experiment and establishing some personal space without the usual eavesdroppers. Specifically we will be looking into preventing browser tracking, securing communication channels and direct online payments (TOR, GnuPG, OTR, and Bitcoin). In this workshop we will help you getting your computer safe and private again.

Tor

Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.

E2EE

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a digital communications paradigm of uninterrupted protection of data traveling between two communicating parties. It involves the originating party encrypting data to be readable only by the intended recipient, and the receiving party decrypting it, with no involvement in said encryption by third parties. The intention of end-to-end encryption is to prevent intermediaries, such as Internet providers or application service providers, from being able to discover or tamper with the content of communications. End-to-end encryption generally includes protections of both confidentiality and integrity.

Stefan Hechenberger

Stefan Hechenberger was a resident at Eyebeam, hacking on OpenFrameworks with Zach Lieberman and other OF ninjas. Beyond this he indulges in exploratory software and hardware engineering with an emphasis on architecture, product design, tangible media, and motion design. Previously he has been studying in Germany and California and holds a masters from New York University/ITP. His background is Computer Science, Astronautics, Art, and Design.

Surveillance, hacking & privacyFacelessFes t, lecture day 2 A lot of people say: ‘I have nothing to hide’. Facebook and Google are practically taking over the world. What will happen when Google Glass is released? Will we still have a private life? Journalist Maurits Martijn sheds a light on this. Stefan Hechenberger takes us into the world of hacking and open source. And Dan Hassler-Forest presents his research on superheroes and surveillance culture. There’s food at 19:00, first lecture will kick off at 20:00.

Stefan Hechenberger

Stefan Hechenberger was a resident at Eyebeam, hacking on OpenFrameworks with Zach Lieberman and other OF ninjas. Beyond this he indulges in exploratory software and hardware engineering with an emphasis on architecture, product design, tangible media, and motion design. Previously he has been studying in Germany and California and holds a masters from New York University/ITP. His background is Computer Science, Astronautics, Art, and Design. His talk will broach the hack as a form of expression, culture hacking and the open source movement.

Maurits Martijn

Maurits Martijn studied communication science and philosophy of science at the University of Amsterdam. From 2007 to 2012 he was editor at Vrij Nederland. And at the moment is he writing about technology and surveillance for De Correspondent. He will show us what big technology companies do or can do with our information.

Dan Hassler-Forest

Dan Hassler-Forest is a lecturer in English literature at the University of Amsterdam. He specializes in popular culture and media theory. Dan regularly publishes scholarly work on topics such as comic books, contemporary literature, and popular media. Tonight he will question superheroes as the embodiment of surveillance culture. And talk about masks in relation to the superhero’s (non-)identity.

FacelessFest

From April 1-3 you can join workshops and lectures about privacy, seduction and surveillance. In our exhibition Faceless 100+ artworks explores the trend to hide, mask or edit the face. In these 3 days you can expect workshops by artists Jeremy Bailey, Zach Blas and Stefan Hechenberger.

Post Media Lab at Leuphana University, L?neburg “Taking Care of Things- I got to know and work with artist/hacker Marcel Mars who introduced me to his ambitious project ?Public Library-Memory of the World? http://www.memoryoftheworld.org/public-library/

I will be joining Marcel and others in March for an intensive phase of development on a number of fronts. The following discussion is the first of a number of conversations That will cover questions as they arise in the development process.

The digital revolution was a dinner party but its afterglow is not. The once utopian promises of high-definition audiovisuals, real-time electronic communication and infinite storage possibilities are just some of the digital culture perspectives that are now widely disseminated. At the same time as these phenomena are still shrouded in the glossy aesthetics of the digital, their tarnished appeal cannot be denied in a world where ‘big data’ is also the ‘big brother’ of mass surveillance and where the ‘cloud’ is made of the metals and minerals of the ‘earth’ on which data centers are built. Far from immaterial and neutral, our post-digital culture is one where tech is deeply embedded in the geophysical and geopolitical. This is evident at the significant ‘other sites’ of digital culture such as e-waste dumps, mines, mass-digitisation companies and security agencies. transmediale 2014 proposes the post-digital moment of ‘afterglow’ as a diagnosis of the current status of the digital hovering between ‘trash and treasure’. afterglow conjures up the ambivalent state of digital culture, where what seems to remain from the digital revolution is a paradoxical nostalgia for the futuristic high-tech it once promised us but that is now crumbling in our hands. The challenge that this moment poses is how to use that state of post-digital culture between trash and treasure as a still not overdetermined space from which to invent new speculative thought and practice. Are there means of renewal in the excess, overflow and waste products of the digital afterglow?

Conference Programme

What does it mean to speak about digital culture today, and what are the implications of the term post-digital? The conference takes afterglow as a metaphor for the present condition of digital culture, examining the geopolitical, infrastructural and bodily consequences of the excessive digitisation that has taken place over the course of the last three decades. These topics have been divided into three streams that each reflect a different aspect of digital culture in the afterglow: An Afterglow of the Mediatic, chaired by Jussi Parikka and Ryan Bishop of the Winchester School of Art, focuses on the materiality of the digital from a geopolitical and geophysical perspective; Hashes to Ashes, chaired by Tatiana Bazzichelli, reflects on the strategic infrastructure of the digital and the backdoors behind the glossy surface of connectivity; Will you be my TRASHURE?, chaired by Francesco Warbear Macarone Palmieri and Katrien Jacobs, speaks about the body of the digital, and its implication on identity, sexuality and pleasure as a way to reflect on politics and culture.

NOTICIAS RELACIONADAS

– See more at: http://www.hoyesarte.com/evento/2014/01/arte-del-mundo-arabe-en-el-macba/?utm_source=Danny%20Lyon,%20retratando%20a%20Am%C3%A9rica%20/%20Estrenos%20de%20cine%20/%20Ron%20Galella,%20paparazzi%20/%20Julio%20C%C3%A9sar&utm_medium=boletin&utm_campaign=boletin#sthash.WKZSW4lx.dpuf

n_polytope – Behaviours in Sound and Light After Iannis Xenakis

The CTM 2014 Radio Lab is dedicated to exploration and experimentation at the interface between the medium of radio and live performance. Two participative projects, co-commissioned by Deutschlandradio Kultur, ICAS, ECAS, Goethe-Institut, and CTM will premiere at the festival.

∏-node by ∏-node ∏-node will be broadcasting its hybrid radio stream online, 24 hours a day, from 24.1.–2.2.2014 via http://p-node.org. Both local Berliners and radio/hacker enthusiasts worldwide are invited to feed content (live music, streams, talks) into ∏-node’s diffusion stream as of 24.1. via an IRC (internet relay chat) on the group’s website.

Those in Berlin are invited to visit ∏-node at its week-long home in the Where is Jesus? café (20.1–2.2.2014, daily 11–22h), and to participate in the project by building radio transmitters and various devices such as small radios, cheap emitters/transmitters, and frequency jammers. The public is also invited to search for radio transmitters diffusing ∏-Node’s ongoing, 24-hour broadcasts. Transmitters will be placed in different locations in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood daily, and indicated on the p-node.org map.

A week’s worth of radio play will conclude at a joint closing performance:

Sadie Plant (UK/CH)?Mixing music, cybernetics, and feminism.?Some thoughts on the longstanding connections between music and cybernetics.

Susanne Kirchmayr (AT)“Generative transformations – Deviate from the grid”Susanne Kirchmayr wil deliver insights into her praxis of sound production and composition. Drawing on her background in linguistics, her recent compositions have worked with human, often female voices to deal with themes of the disintegration of spoken languages, deconstruction and reorganization of meanings and [grammatical] structures. In her presentation, she will also demonstrate her research into the musical potential of concurrent sequences with divergent timings in order to go beyond the scope of ordinary rhythmic synchronizations.https://femalepressure.bandcamp.com/track/waitinghttps://soundcloud.com/indigo

Fender Schrade (DE)“Performing Between Their Bodies And Your Ears. Stories of a Trans*gendered Live Sound Engineer.”Fender Schrade approaches live sound engineering through an artistic as well as a trans*feminist perspective. The talk will discuss the particularities of the agency of a live sound engineer and the interactions with space, bodies, technology and sound.

Marie Thompson (UK)?Feminizing noise?In this talk, Marie will explore the relationship between constructions of femininity and noise, which is understood here as an affective, transformative force, rather than simply as unwanted sound. She will suggest that ?feminine? noises are often deemed negative; not because of what they mean, but as a result of the transformations they threaten to induce. Marie will raise questions around essentialism ? does talking of a feminine or feminized noise require us to adopt an essentialist position, or can an alternative approach be found?

How do we know what we know about the history of electronic music, and how does this knowledge frame, and sometimes limit, approaches to the creative, technical, and social possibilities of music-making in the present? What knowledge might sound itself give us to live more mindfully and create more expansively? This lecture draws upon feminist theories and archival research to explore these questions in the context of the CTM festival’s theme of “discontinuity,” which calls for challenging and presenting alternatives to existing histories of electronic music.

Dr. Tara Rodgers (Analog Tara) is a composer, historian and critic of electronic music, based in the Washington, DC, area. She has presented work at the Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, on the Le Tigre Remix album, and in many other forums. She is the author of numerous essays on music, technology, and culture, and of Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound (Duke University Press, 2010), a collection of interviews that won the 2011 Pauline Alderman Book Award from the International Alliance for Women in Music. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Leonardo Music Journal and Women & Music. http://www.pinknoises.com/

Call for Papers ‘Merging Media: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Hybrid Arts’

4th November 2013

Event Date: Saturday 1st February 2014

Event Location: University of Kent, Canterbury

Deadline for submissions: 13th December 2013

Although we naturally recognise different artistic media as distinct forms music, painting, sculpture, film, dance, theatre, architecture, animation, and so on we also understand that these mediums can nevertheless have a meaningful dialogue in the creation of new artworks. Over the course of art history there have been numerous occasions when different media forms have merged or been juxtaposed for artistic purposes. These intermedial examples have seen word and image intertwined on the page in the illuminated books of William Blake; experimentation with the partnership between painting and music in Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; performance and musicmixed in Variations by John Cage; the deconstruction of paintings through digital visual manipulation in Peter Greenaway’s lectures; and the recent National Theatre Live and Royal Opera House theatrical performances being broadcast onto cinema screens. These instances and many more demonstrate a long tradition of medium boundaries being crossed, media being combined to accentuate one another, or the creation of a new medium altogether.

It is particularly relevant to consider the subject of merging media at a time when discussions of media archaeologies, media convergence and the transmedia phenomena permeate contemporary academic debates. This conference seeks to engage with these topics by exploring the theories and histories of hybrid art, as well as the effect new technologies have upon our understanding of this concept. The emergence of digital technologies is an important strand in this investigation because it has both facilitated the creation of new art forms (such as 3D digital animation) and generated the remediation of older forms (for example, the digitisation of literature for consumption on computerised devices, and new forms of interaction with fine art online through virtual galleries).

This one-day conference is for postgraduate students and early career researchers whose work incorporates the interdisciplinary topic of artistic hybridity and intermediality. We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations (individual papers or pre-formed 3-paper panels) or performance pieces from candidates across arts and humanities. We welcome papers, panels and performances that investigate “merging media” through a variety of interpretations. Possible research topics for submission can include, but are not limited to:

Hybridity of forms: case studies which explore instances where two or more established art forms are combined. What is the effect of this hybridisation?

Hybridity and technology: the impact of new technologies upon intermedial art forms, both past and present. Does technology facilitate the “merging” of media for artistic purposes, or is this an inevitable side-effect of and an unavoidable trajectory towards a larger media convergence culture?

Hybridity and history: specific case studies of merged media from the past, from Wagner’s conception of gesamtkunstwerkwhere all art-forms are united as one total art to the revolutionary intermedial ‘decadence’ of Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and others.

Hybridity of performance: how performance is incorporated with various art media, from architecture in site-specific performances, to video in multi-media productions. How do we engage with performance through technology? How does the notion of “intermedial” relate to the performance of art?

Hybridity and the audience: what effect does a “hybrid art” form have upon its audience? How does merging media provide new opportunities for engaging with artworks?

Hybridity and remix culture: how various art forms are recycled and reused in the establishment of new works of art (e.g. the reprocessing of “found footage” for the purposes of art; fan-made hybrid products).

Hybridity and modes of production: ways in which hybridisation impacts upon the production or creation of an artwork. What relationship does this production have with the development and influence of new technologies? What implications do intermedial modes have upon the idea of a singular artist? Which organisations or institutions inspire or enable the creation of hybrid art?

Hybridity and sites of exhibition: what is the relationship between the intermedial art and how it is exhibited? Is there a convergence between performance and exhibition? How is the exhibition of such work impacted by technology? Or is it technological itself (such as the internet)?

Hybridity and theory: work on the historical or future discourse of intermediality. What implication does contemporary “merging media” hold for theory? How should hybrid arts be theorised and which elements such as production, exhibition or audience interaction should be centralised in this scholarly debate?

In his performance work, ‘The Boy who Fell Over Niagara Falls’, Bas Yan Ader began to develop an art practice around an on-going fantasy of falling. In his films Fall 1 andFall 2 he attempted to realise this fantasy of falling. In this talk, I want to consider how this set of gestures (along with a number of other falling off points) can be read in relation to theories of the image and the event. What does this ‘return to nature’ (if that’s what it is) in which the artist does not make art so much as ‘subject himself to the forces of gravity’, tell us about concepts of experience, mediation and identity in an age ‘after the destruction of experience’? As well as Bas Yan Ader, the talk will include reference to the work of Carolee Schneemann, Yves Klein, Ana Mendieta and the Bureau of Inverse Technology.

Each paper will be 20 minutes, with 30 minutes at the end of the session for Q&A

Session 1 – 11.30-1.00

Panel 1: Evolving Books and Libraries

Dennis Moser (University of Alaska Fairbanks) – ‘Everything Old is New … Again — The Continued and Evolving Intermediality of the Artist’s Book’

Cristina Miranda de Almeida (University of the Basque Country and Internet Interdisciplinary Institute/UOC) – ‘ New materialities and sensibilities. Understanding Smart cities as hybrid ecologies for art experience’

We are delighted to announce that the confirmed keynote speaker for Merging Mediawill be Dr Duncan White (Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London).

Dr White’s research interests include: the crossover between experimental film; theories of space; performance and reception; written and visual media; and poetry.

More information about Dr White’s research can be found here: http://www.arts.ac.uk/research/research-staff/a-z/dr-duncan-white/

Recent Research (taken from Arts website):

“I am currently working on a book entitled Art After the Destruction of Experience. I am the lead author and co-editor of Expanded Cinema: Art Performance Film (Tate Publishing 2011), an in-depth account of the histories of Expanded Cinema focusing on questions around notions of space, time and spectatorship in experimental live film and video. I am also working on event-based research projects that include, “Light Writing”, which considers the rich and varied use of text in artists’ film and video and “Flicker and Hum” which explores the relationship between film and experiments in sound. I am also interested in experimental writing practices.”

Books/journal articles

2013: Journal Article ‘Art After the Destruction of Experience: DIAS and Experimental Film in Britain’,Millennium Film Journal ed. by Grahame Weinbren

2008: Journal article ‘Unnatural Facts: The Fictions of Robert Smithson’ in Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Vol.1, no. 2. pp.161-176. Published by Intellect Ltd. Edited by Julia Lockheart and John Wood.

Recent conference papers/events/exhibitions

2013: ‘Automatic Writing’ video installation for Publish and Be Damned Book Fair, ICA, London

Effective use of the Internet will benefit everyone. Currently the benefitsof the Internet are distributed unequally: some people gain power, wealthand influence from using the Internet while others struggle for basicaccess. In our vision, people in their communities and everywhere –including the poor and marginalized in developing and developed countries,women and youth, indigenous peoples, older persons, those with disabilities— will use the Internet to develop and exercise their civic intelligenceand work together to address collective challenges.

More than a technology or a marketplace, the Internet is a socialenvironment, a community space for people to interact with the expectationthat principles of equity, fairness and justice will prevail. Internetgovernance must ensure that this online social space functions effectivelyfor the well-being of all.

A community informatics approach to Internet governance supports equaldistribution of Internet benefits and addresses longstanding social,economic, cultural and political injustices in this environment. Questionsof social justice and equity through the Internet are central to how theInternet and society will evolve. People in different communities must beempowered to develop and adapt the Internet infrastructure to reflect theircore values and ways of knowing.

We support development of an Internet in which communities are the “firstmile” and not the “last mile.” We believe the primary purpose of theInternet is not to mine data and make knowledge a commodity for purchase andsale but rather to advance community goals equally and fairly within thesedistributed infrastructures.

We aspire to an Internet effectively owned and controlled by the communitiesthat use it and to Internet ownership that evolves through communitiesfederated regionally, nationally and globally. The Internet’s role as acommunity asset, a public good and a local community utility is moreimportant than its role as a site for profit-making or as a global artifact.The access layer and the higher layers of applications and content should becommunity owned and controlled in a way that supports a rich ecology ofcommercial enterprises subject to and serving community and publicinterests.

As citizens and community members in an Internet-enabled world we have acollective interest in how the Internet is governed. Our collectiveinterests need to be expressed and affirmed in all fora discussing thefuture of the Internet. As a collective, and as members of civil society, wehave developed a declaration for Internet governance based on principles ofcommunity informatics. We appreciate your interest and welcome your support.

A just and equitable Internet provides:

1. Fair and equitable means to access and use the Internet: affordableby all and designed and deployed so that all may realize the benefits ofeffective use. The poor and marginalized, women, youth, indigenous peoples,older persons, those with disabilities, Internet users and non-users alike;no one, from any community globally, should be without Internet access. 2. Equitable access within communities to the benefits of the Internet,including information, opportunities to communicate, increased effectivenessof communications and information management, and opportunities toparticipate in system development and content creation. Everyone, within allcommunities, should have the right, the means and the opportunity to use theInternet to share the full intellectual heritage of humankind without unduecost or hindrance. 3. Respect for privacy — people must be able to conveniently use theInternet in a way that is credibly protected against large-scalesurveillance or interference by government authorities or corporateinterests. 4. Infrastructure that ensures the maximum level of personal securityand reliability. 5. Opportunities for all within all communities to build, manage, andown Internet infrastructure as and when it is needed. 6. Internet governance by democratic principles and processes –including privileging input from communities affected by decisions andensuring inclusion of the widest possible perspectives supporting thedevelopment of our digital environments. 7. A peer-to-peer architecture with equal power and privilege for eachnode or end point and complete neutrality of the architecture and medium forall users and all applications. 8. Recognition that the local is a fundamental building block of allinformation and communications and the “global” is a “federation of locals.”

9. Equal opportunity for all to connect and communicate in a languageand culture of their choice. 10. Recognition and equal privileging of many types of knowledge andways of knowing, building from the capacities of each individual, communityand knowledge society. 11. The means for information freely provided on and through theInternet to be freely available for the use and benefit of all. 12. Support for collaboration, engagement, education, solidarity, andproblem-solving as the stepping stones to civic intelligence and thecapacity of communities, civil society, and all people to equitably andeffectively engage in informed self-governance.

You are invited to endorse this Declaration as an Individual and/or as anOrganization

Hashtag: #InternetJustice

This document was prepared by a group of Community Informatics activists andendorsed by consensus of the Community Informatics community 21.12.13 (aversion edited for style and grammar and not content was re-endorsed28.12.13.)

[We are very much looking for sign-on’s on the Declaration (see below) as wewant to take this statement to the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on theFuture of Internet Governance<http://www.cgi.br/brmeeting/announcement.html> that the President ofBrazil is convening in April on principles for Internet governancepost-Snowden. We think that there will be very strong pressure to maintainthe status quo with some minor technical changes and we are hoping togenerate some significant momentum for a broader initiative towards anInternet for the Common Good.]

This two-part symposium addresses the transformation of the museum in the age of social media. How does the presence of networked digital devices affect our experience of art in the museum’s galleries? In what ways do these historical shifts in the mediation of our perception reflect our beliefs about the function of the museum in our society? How can we understand the role that the numerous corporate digital platforms utilized by museums and their publics play in the presentation of art? We will explore the ways in which rapid public sharing from within the museum transforms our attitudes toward works of art and the spaces that house them, seeking to assess the stakes of this affective digital economy.

Distinguished scholars, curators, and artists discuss these questions in two sections—a panel of long-form presentations followed by a fast-paced series of short creative lecture propositions, followed by discussion among audience and participants.

Shared Spaces is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and Gordon Hall, Director of the Center for Experimental Lectures, and João Enxuto and Erica Love, Whitney Independent Study Program, 2012–2013.

This event will be utilizing a site-specific network developed by programmer and activist Dan Phiffer. Please bring your laptop or device for use.

$8 general admission; $6 senior citizens and students.

This program is free for members but advance registration is required by emailing memberinfo@whitney.org with your name and membership number.

Illusions of Thunder, and Sound Art as Mainstream Cultural Commodity

The following paragraphs served as the introduction and preamble to the presentation on “Sound Art as Mainstream Cultural Commodity”, given at the “What is Sound Design?” symposium, at The Edinburgh College of Art, 28 Nov 2013, and are in turn based on elements of the “Rorschach Audio” talk presented at the “Theatre Noise” conference, at The Central School of Speech & Drama, London, 23 April 2009. With apologies here to those readers who will be familiar with some of these arguments already, the introduction adds some important points – not least about what you might call the prehistory of contemporary sonic art. The following paragraphs were followed by an abridged version of the existing “Rorschach Audio” talk; then, in terms of delivering this talk’s political punch-line, followed by a series of videos which show how almost all the audio illusions demonstrated in the preceding talk are already known to and employed by creative artists, albeit artists who primarily operate within popular culture, as opposed to what’s conventionally thought of as being fine-art…

“There is a perception, particularly among contemporary art critics and arts commentators, but also among members of the public, that sound art is a relatively new art form. Of course the truth is that sounds produced by voices are among the earliest raw materials ever subjected to any form of creative manipulation. Speech itself is an art-form, and therefore poetry and literature of the oral tradition are, alongside music, the oldest forms of sound art, and probably the oldest art-forms. On that basis it can be argued that far from being a marginal or in any way “difficult” art-from, sound art is instead the most primal, the most pervasive, and arguably the earliest form of creative art. The argument put forward in my book “Rorschach Audio” is that, paraphrasing Aristotle’s “Poetics”, since written language is based on symbolic visual representations of indivisible sounds, the earliest form of sound recording technology was not, as is generally presumed, any form of machine, but was in fact written language. Alongside poetry and literature of the oral tradition, even written literature and poetry are therefore forms of sound art. So, when one considers music, poetry, literature, theatrical dialogue, theatrical sound effects and architectural acoustics, and particularly also sound design for contemporary cinema and computer games, it can be argued that, in its various diverse and widespread manifestations, sound art is one of, if not the, most mainstream and commercially important of cultural commodities.

By way of illustration, the art of designing theatrical sound effects is for instance quite clearly a form of sound art, which goes back at least as far as those architects whose expertise ensured that the proverbial pin could be heard dropping throughout the auditoria of ancient Greek amphitheatres. As regards specifically British history, the theatrical historian Robert Mott describes how since as long ago as “Shakespearian days” a “popular” method for simulating thunder sounds in theatre involved using “a cannon-ball rolling down a trough and falling onto a huge drum”. Robert Mott states that “some people were not pleased with this cumbersome technique”, so, in 1708, the theatre critic and dramatist John Dennis designed a thunder effect for his play “Appius & Virginia” at Drury Lane. John Dennis “invented something more realistic and controllable – a large piece of thin copper sheeting suspended from a frame by wires”. “The thunder sheet was a great success, and as a result other stage productions began using his effect. This infuriated Dennis to the point where he would angrily confront the offending producer by charging ‘you, Sir, are stealing my thunder!’.”Dennis is also said to have stated that “that is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my thunder, but not my play”. What this anecdote provides is not just another example of “early” sound art – of sonic art that predates contemporary fine-arts practice by 200 years – but also potentially the earliest recorded instance of what amounts to an intellectual property dispute between sound artists. This dispute was in fact so important that the phrase “stealing my thunder” has, for hundreds of years, been immortalised as common usage in no less than the English language.

The fact that, despite such histories, sonic art is not generally perceived to be a mainstream art-form, has arguably a great deal to do with phenomena of psychology of perception, and it is the psychology of perception of audible speech which forms the central focus of the book I’ve mentioned – “Rorschach Audio”. “Rorschach Audio” starts as a critique of so-called Electronic Voice Phenomena research. EVP is a belief system, whose adherents believe they’re able to literally record the voices of ghosts; and, as the demonstrations I’m about to present show, the misperception of stray radio and communications chatter as ghost-voices stems from misrepresentations of psychoacoustic phenomena. EVP practitioners misperceive voices they’ve recorded because those voices are sufficiently ambiguous, and because the beliefs EVP followers attach to them are sufficiently strong, to produce sound illusions which can be, if not objectively convincing, at least emotionally appealing. As well as demonstrating intriguing auditory phenomena, this talk is relevant to the sonic arts because so many, often high-profile, sound artists work with EVP, and because the ideas presented link to the individual generally recognised as the most important Western artist ever, and because they link to what is arguably the most important work of visual arts theory! I will now present a shortened version of the “Rorschach Audio” talk. Then, referring back to our theme of Sound Art as Mainstream Cultural Commodity, show as many examples as time permits of similar illusions to those discussed in “Rorschach Audio”, as they’re employed in mass-market mainstream popular arts culture.”…